I once was a writer...

I don't particularly care for unsolicited advice - I think no one does. I do appreciate people who care enough about me to give me such unsolicited advice anyway, but they do it in such a polite manner that I feel as if I asked them to advise me. Like my friend H, who sent me an email regarding my name , or my friend J who sends me pics of what dress I should wear. I like that. I like that because they are both just saying what they think while fully respecting whatever I choose. My friend J also happens to have the same taste in dresses as I do, so her advice is much more like SOLICITED help. But then come the people who express their opinions in ways that make you want to kill them. Seriously. I am no murderer, but sometimes I can see why murders happen. Phrases that begin with, "It is so stupid to [insert MY personal opinion about the subject at hand]" seriously bring out the worst in me. Dude, I think, if you want to persuade me to think like you and to agree with...

What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet - right? But then, when remembering who you are, you need to know where you come from, or so said Mufasa. And both of those require your name. So your name is you . And changing your name changes you. Right? If a rose were called "violet" it would not be a rose. Yes? I don't know. I'm not even sure what side I'm arguing for. Or against. All I know is that right now I am faced with making the decision of what the heck to do with my name. My name is really long (last name, that is), because in Colombian culture people use both their father's as well as their mother's last name. It used to be that when women married, their name would be legally changed: They would lose their mother's name, keep their father's, and become "of" the husband. For example: my aunt was born Graciela Murillo Salazar. But when she married (a half a century ago) she legally became Graciela M...

My situation this morning is what people make movies from.  Scary movies, that is.  Dude, if you don't find a new blog by next Monday, or if you don't notice me on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn or BBM, it might very well be because I got murdered in the lecture hall. Olsenhauserstraße 75.  And my bet is, it was the janitor lady who murdered me.  I was the ONLY ONE  at the bus stop at 7:27 a.m., and there are always more than 20 people waiting with me. There were less than  10 people (including me and the driver) on the bus, when I generally cannot find a free seat. I was the only one who got out on my stop at 7:32, which is one of the three main stops for a university catering to over 23,000 students.  The bus driver asked me, "Why so lonely?", which of course creeped me out even more, making me for the first time realize, OMFG, I'm actually alone...   I smiled, managed some sort of answer (which I later realized was wrong, because I shoul...

I hate marketing. I hate it. I hate it -- because it works. You see, I'm getting married in seven months (yay me! Check out our wedding website ), and I need to do all the planning here in Germany for a wedding taking place in the Caribbean coast of Colombia. It does seem like a challenge, but I am an amazing planner and I can do it. Also, my mom and sister/Maid of Honor have it all under control. But, as I said, since I'm in Germany, there are many things I need to do online. So I have to rely on websites to kinda figure out what I want. Before I went online, I took advice from my good friend Hope (who also recently married) and closed my eyes and imagined my perfect wedding. This is what my perfect wedding looks like: At the beach, hopefully getting our feet wet while saying "I do", at sunset, with only our closest family and friends (so, no more than 20 people), drinking piña coladas and eating fish and coconut rice, listening to soothing background music a...

I couldn't sleep a couple of nights ago. I must have eaten too much. But that happens more often than not. I try to finally "go to bed" (as in, go to sleep) when I can no longer keep my eyes open. But that takes a while. I have been known to surf all the things  on imgur on my iPhone until the battery runs out, which really bothers Honey. He says that we should sleep together, at the same time. I try not to think, I try to free my mind. But that doesn't always work. And, like I said, I really couldn't sleep the other night. I "went to bed" at 10 pm, but I was really, really tired. I could hardly keep my eyes open, I could not focus on anything, I could not stop yawning. So I figured it was about time. Of course, as my friend Murphy would have it, it was only when I turned off all the lights, hit the mute switch on all the phones, turned off the TV and the laptop, found the perfect pillow position and sighed what I expected to be the last sigh of the ...