#wriwiwo

[wriwiwo]

107 - Easy come, easier go

As I have learned today, not protecting your assets adequately can make you really hate yourself when you lose them due to stupid mistakes. Here’s to me! Two minutes.

Get some then lose some Money doesn't make happy It just relaxes

[wriwiwo]

106 - Burying a Hatchet

The new year is starting off not that bad so far - at least for everything that isn’t my writing. Sorry. Two minutes.

A few unkind words then some apologies well traded An old feud settled

[wriwiwo]

105 - Happy New Year!

Happy new haiku! One minute.

Beautiful colors set the pitch black sky on fire. Happy New Year all!

[wriwiwo]

113 - Ramen

An ode (read: haiku) to ramen. Two minutes.

Five minutes, a bowl, boiling water and a pot. Ramen is living.

[wriwiwo]

112 - Of Time and food-induced Injuries

I only miss my weekly schedule if Sunday passes without an update, so, hooray for time zones. Also, ever had your breakfast hurt you? Two minutes.

The clock is ticking, but it's still last week somewhere. Breakfast burned my face.

[wriwiwo]

109 - Annual Dread

Early every year, I agonize over where to go in my vacations. And so the cycle repeats this year. Two minutes.

Vacations are fun, but I don't like to plan them. Why can't I decide?

[wriwiwo]

104 - TMC

Too. Much. Christmas. One minute.

Had too much to eat and had too much to drink, too. Happy Holidays!

[wriwiwo]

103 - Curse of Freedom

Somehow, at the end of every vacation, I’m kind of in a slump. Or maybe I just don’t want to go back to work and instead take some more time off. One minute.

Every vacation  makes me doubt my life some more. What to do with it?

[wriwiwo]

102 - Off the Clock

Instead of the forecast rains we had plenty of snow today! One minute.

The last for this year - time to do the stuff I want! Maybe even write.

[wriwiwo]

101 - Dry Spell

This whole thing would be easier if I had a good idea. Better luck next time! One minute.

Words are everywhere Except in my head or hands. I need a story.

[wriwiwo]

100 -  Still Here

Still here - and so are the haikus! One minute.

Sometimes all you need is that one to have your back. Wind under your wings.

[wriwiwo]

99 - Arcane Kernel

From the story shack’s writing prompt generator again - 15 minutes. 

Word count: 150

Genre: Fantasy

Character: An archivist

Material: Popcorn

Sentence: "This is delicious!"

Bonus: Your character has a world-changing idea.

After a long, hard day at work filing away dusty old books full of even older lore, the smell of freshly popped corn was just elating.

Leaning against the kitchen counter and hearing the satisfying popping, a thought struck him like lightning: If pixie dust was an integral ingredient in so many magical concoctions, had anyone ever thought to use it as a condiment?

After a quick run through the small alchemy lab he had kept in his study, he raced back to his snack in the making. He took a deep breath and then chucked in a few dashes of the powder from a small glass jar. The aroma that flared up was so enthralling, he almost burned his mouth getting a first taste.

“This is delicious!”, he cried out as he shoveled another mouthful past his teeth.

“This…”, he swallowed blissfully, “This changes everything! I’ll become a chef!”

[wriwiwo]

90 - Breaking Fast

Let me tell you about my breakfast. 25 minutes.

Today I went to a small café in a nice neighborhood for breakfast. I ordered the vegan breakfast.

I’m not a vegan but a vegetarian; however I’ve encountered enough instances of people not actually knowing what vegetarian exactly means. After one too many discussions about whether a cake was vegetarian – “Of course it’s vegetarian, there’s no meat in the cream…” - “What about gelatin?” - “Yes, we do use gelatin.” – I generally just go for a vegan option if they are offered at places I suspect not being fully up to my expectations when it comes to knowing whether I can eat their stuff. Vegan seems easier to understand for some people, which makes sense if you look at pescetarians calling themselves vegetarians. I’m a stickler when it comes to my definitions.

Anyway. The food.

Compared to the user-uploaded picture on Yelp I had seen, which must have been outdated, the menu in the café said nothing about it coming with baked beans. Also, the price was a good quarter higher. I’m no lover of baked beans and the price was still agreeable, so I went and ordered anyway.

The plate looked very colorful with all the different things on them. I do believe that the first bite of everything tastes best – there are exceptions of course – and so if I can, I like to order dishes that consist of many different, small portions. There was some fresh fruit (apple and pineapple) and a few slices of cucumber and tomato on a salad leaf for garnish; two grape leaves filled with rice, a helping of baba ghanoush, a bit of chickpea salad, a bit of potato salad, a bit of bulgur salad with tomato paste in it and a salad of fried zucchini and cucumber with dill.

The fruit and vegetables were fresh and ripe, but nothing extraordinary. Standard garnish. I’ve never had filled grape leaves, so I was wondering what they would taste like. It reminded me of sushi, in a way. There was vinegar and some spices in the rice filling and the leaves added bit of green salad-like flavor to it. The vinegar flavor was quite strong and I am not a big fan of vinegar, so I was happy with the two small rolls on the plate. The baba ghanoush was very mild, almost bland. It fit well with everything, thanks to that and helped neutralize some of the acidity of nearly all of the dishes on the plate. The chickpea salad consisted mostly of just chickpeas with pepper, a hint of other spices like cumin – and vinegar – and some finely cut onions and chilies. The potato salad consisted of cooked potatoes, parsley and again Mediterranean spices and again, vinegar. The bulgur with tomato paste was very much exactly the stuff you can find in the supermarket. The highlight, funnily enough to me, was the salad of fried zucchini and carrots. While I generally associate dill with fish dishes, it worked really well to blend the flavor of the vegetables together into something new. None of the vegetable slices were overcooked and there was minimal oil in it, which is a plus in my book.

The two bread rolls that come with it were your average bread rolls, which is a bit disappointing if you consider that the dishes on the plate are all Mediterranean. Something closer to that, like flat bread, would have fit the selection better and should be well doable given the price.

The amount of food I got was more than enough – I’ve paid more for less at other places – and it did keep me full for the better part of the day. That can at least in part be attributed to the amount of vinegar, which my stomach does not take too well to.

All in all, my experience was average. I would recommend it to everyone in particular that enjoys these kinds of dishes and does not mind a slightly higher price tag. Everything was fresh and healthy. Compared to other dishes, vegetarian or vegan for that matter, it falls flat however. None of the things stood out by themselves nor did the combination of things leave an impact, making it seem more like they are offering a vegan option out of necessity rather than choice.

[wriwiwo]

89 - Writing about Writing

I have begun a couple times over the years, but this time I think I will actually go through with it: I’m writing a book. Fingers crossed. I will probably dedicate some of these to a kind of behind the scenes look into what the process is like for me. Here goes. 35 minutes.

Actually, for real now, writing this story frightens me a little bit.

I bought a manga when I was 16. I read it, like you do, and put it away. Then I read it again. And again. There was something about it that I could not exactly put my finger on that resonated with me. The writing was not great, the art was amateurish at worst and just about good at best, but something struck a chord with me.

While supposedly there was a second volume, I was never able to actually find a copy of it. Any place that was supposed to sell it only showed it but did not have the option to actually order it. Never saw it in stores, either. It was from local artists, whom, in the grand scheme of things, weren’t known at all.

Around the time of me reading the book, I went through a rough time. We all probably have at some point. I did not have any friends that could have helped me through it – or so I thought, I never actually talked to them about the things that happened – and I could not talk to my parents, so I went where none of this mattered: Into my own head. I could spend hours doing nothing, laying on my bed and being somewhere else. From the usual day dreams to imagining how it would be to be someone else, I eventually ended up putting some version of me into the stories I read or movies I watched. It seems kind of embarrassing to admit that for some reason, but hey, I had nowhere else to go and nothing better to do. I don’t think there is anything wrong with it, as long as the escapism does not become unhealthy.

I remember doing an internship through school in some department store and being completely out of place. There I was, the unwieldy fat kid, standing around in the music section without any knowledge about music. Like, I never even heard of 99% of the bands we had CDs of, nor was I into the current mainstream to the point where half of the songs in the charts would have rung a bell. So I spent my time there walking around, waiting for someone to tell me to do something or a customer making the bad decision to ask me for recommendations, and, by far most of the time, fantasizing about things.

The thing I went back to the most was that manga. The story was horrible, but the premise – even though completely undeveloped from the few pages they’d spent on it – was good enough. What if some of the things were different? What if most of it was different?

There I was, spacing out and debating internally how the physics behind something as un-physical as magic could be explained.

As much as I hated my internship, I loved the banality of it for the time it gave me not having to use my head for the here and now, but to create not just one or several characters, but an entire world. At some point back then, I told myself that I will write this story down and I am currently in the process of doing that. What started with me thinking of how a person like me would exist in this scenario has completely blown up the original scope of my inspiration and only retains some elements of it.

It will take me a while and there are many parts of it that draw inspiration from some of the things I have been through. Focusing on them, fleshing them out into coherent scenes, brings me back and makes me relive stuff that I was happy having put behind me. In a way I think that it will be a good experience doing this, though. If I never share the story that I have spent so much time on, would that not be a waste?