are all European homes within built with IKEA parts as if they were Lego?

there's an Italian colleague here I at first thought was cold. y'day he and I had Vietnamese lunch together cos no one else was around. we ended up talking. he's lived in Shanghai, even in DC a bit.. loves that city like I do too. made a face at NYC, said it has a soul (like Rome for him) that is too much, it overwhelms. i think I understand; NYC is the only place outside of India and Kathmandu that has felt overwhelming. and now I want to visit Rome to meet its soul. 

we started talking about politics at some point, about how no one in Budapest seemed to care while news from outside about Orban seemed full of fear and boding. he said "because we are privileged..". from there on he got sad or hopeless and started talking first about India's abstaining regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine... and then about Italians and their anti-Americanism and fascination for Putin and strong men.. i almost felt like hugging him he got so morose. I tried to cheer him up by asking if he had seen Zelensky's show on Netflix but he doesn't have Netflix! just like his surprise at me not using WhatsApp maybe. and then he left unsaid many things which he said were for another time... and then left to buy blueberries...

even at work he looks like his mind is on another plane sometimes, I'm not sure it's sadness, coldness, or something quite else.

Later i went and bought blueberries too, from the central market; and strawberries, and apples and mandarins, and puffed rice and celery (with root). fresh produce is so cheerful, esp sold lose by weight. but even here they give each thing in a separate plastic bag; I've started recycling and carrying my own; the Asian woman in a stall y'day was annoyed at me for that, dunno why. 

I was watching something on Netflix, a coming of age of Indian (short) love stories, about queer people, about casual love, found but that probably would never last, etc. ... In one a guy asks a girl why she and her friends stage protests about the degradation of the environment when they know it won't change anything in the world. the girl says, "so the world doesn't change me".

Ive been wanting to cut my hair real short again and maybe color it blue/purple, now I wouldn't even need to bleach it before adding color cos there are lots of whites...

walking around a few days I got the feeling that very few Budapest locals work white collar desk jobs and that a number of them probably are employed in art, music, movies, media, etc. or the food and restaurant business. also saw a couple very small groups filming something on the streets, no fanfare no crowd. barely anyone around wears formals, even on weekdays commute hours; such a contrast to DC where I always feel under-dressed with the immaculate women in their pretty dresses going to work in those numerous offices.

now watching a presentation by an American academic visiting this place who works in communication and media studies. he informs me that a major industry in Budapest is films and commercials production, often outsourced from the rest of the world; and that Dune was produced here; and that Budapest has the largest film industry in continental Europe! apparently it even offers a great variety of architectural and geographical locations while remaining in and around the city.

I am in Budapest visiting the IAS of a university. it is funny how many books and shows that I am/was reading/watching have recently and unexpectedly referenced the history of Budapest during the holocaust.. or just the city as today. Russian Doll; Boris on youTube; Sheila Heti's 'Motherhood'; and what I picked up to read on my phone's Kindle today (hubby's account), a book about Kurt Godel.. in fact the last one hit home even more intimately ... I had just received (as I woke up this morning) a rejection for a short paper close to my heart from yet another journal, and the book started with reproducing Godel's psychiatrist's notes about him: "Belief that he hasn't achieved goals that he set out for himself - hence a "failure" - therefore other people, particularly the Institute (Princeton IAS), will also regard him as a failure and try to get rid of him. ... Took on big subjects, may not have been talented enough. - Usually works on his own, in way and fields that are opposed to current stream. ... Listed the various distractions that have interfered w/his progress w/his philosophical work. ..." I was sitting in the office of the National DG of Aliens Policing then and unprepared for a long wait, this was all I had. by the way, the office felt so like the DMVs of the USA, but less crowded and much more European if you know what that means. incidentally, Doha airport felt very American on my recent layover; efficient, clean, with a lot of the ground force of African origin. In the Buda office of Aliens policing I then spent some time looking at maps and reading Wikipedia about the Habsburg empire and the names of the major cities and what they are called now; for eg. Lemberg seems now to be Lviv in Ukraine. Sheila Heti on the other hand moved me by writing about her mother's and father's parents' history in Budapest, and of her mother later in Canada: "When I was five years old, my father and I went to visit her in the apartment where she was living for several months, so she could focus on studying for her exams. There seemed to be nothing so glamorous or romantic in the world as a mother who lived alone in an apartment with her colored pends and books. I wanted to grow up and be like her. I wanted to live in an apartment, too, with no one around to bother me.", and of course the reason why I bought her book in the first place: her questioning, similar but much deeper than mine, of the reasons to become a mother, of the need to do so or not... incidentally also, I am staying in an Airbnb apartment in Pest, in one of those old buildings all stuck together with courtyards in between that house many people with space used very efficiently ("most Hungarians homes are small" a man said to a small boy walking with him a couple days ago behind me on some street here, as he explained to him possibly the difference between Hungary and whichever European country the boy, possibly his nephew, was visiting from) - mine has a loft bed right above my living space - with no one to bother me and so I can work on a new proposal and on old rejected papers, undistracted by anyone, thanks to this visiting grant. also I have always been struck by what Virginia Woolf said and wrote about women and their need of "A room of one's own" which they often didn't have and without which it was difficult if not impossible to tap into their talents... the day I came in, the cleaners were still cleaning out this place, there were no bed linen or towels and the ones used by the previous renters were running in the washer in the bath, my phone and computer plugs wouldn't go into the electric outlets in the walls (European plugs look like Indian ones but have thinner metal pins and smaller plugs and the last times I visited Europe was from the USA where the plugs are different... I got fooled into thinking I didn't need converters this time), there was no shampoo and bath products, ... such that I spent hours hunting around the mall near this place looking for various things and feeling utterly lost. luckily I was carrying my old computer which has an american plug and I realized the small jugaad converter I carried for it works for all my plugs, but this only after I stopped a random desi-looking guy outside the mall to ask him for where I could get an India-Eu converter and he lit a bulb in my mind by saying "there are these Chinese shops..."!!! now after finally having also bought a stove lighter (the apartment has an old stove w/o an auto-lighter that seems like no one has used in a while cos there was no lighter around), which was hard to find as the shops around only seem to carry the portable gas-lighters for the numerous smokers in this city, this apartment is finally feeling like a room of my own. the trams are similar to Jerusalem, you buy tickets and punch them inside the train, but even if you didn't no one is checking, and most locals seem to be traveling with something either more permanent that doesn't need to be brought out at all or without it.. another university I ran into yday, in search of a large park where I could run, felt similar to my university where I got my PhD from, simply in the combination of vast space modern architecture and young people rambling around the campus... (the university where I am visiting is in contrast, a smaller campus, more in the center of town, where you don't see hoards of students milling around). on my way running back, a bus-driver waved to me (or so I thought) and I waved back (felt very American), and then after about 5 minutes of driving along with me or a little faster than me, he stopped at a bus stop and clapped looking at me supposedly to say I made it (catch the bus); I felt like I had misled him but just smiled and ran past; not many people running around (a few near the Danube in the mornings and more inside the modern university campus), but they do seem to walk a lot, and faster than me, which is not usual in most places.

this week has been a whirlwind of emotions that I didn't know I could feel in such short a span of time. students have been harassing and emotionally blackmailing me on email in anticipation of their final grade. one of the two balcony born pigeons died after being unable to learn how to fly. I discovered it with the stench of death and then saw its hardened feet sticking out from under the AC unit there. I've been having trouble eating chicken since then. the nauseousness and simultaneous diarrhoea and throbbing blood through my veins in the middle of the night that sometimes preceded my period in Texas came back mysteriously. got a more welcoming visa after almost being sure it was going to be denied and after thus ranting at 'them' annoyedly. took the metro to try and attend someone's farewell at work and missed the shuttle so took the metro back home. the heat. the mosquitoes. spent a day with visiting parents and bid them off with all my plants so they can water them in my absence. feeling very sad, lost, confused, at leaving home and them even though it's barely a few months (that feel scarily long) and even though I always thought I'd be excited to go in this way. stole a freshly laid egg from the balcony after the death, and put it in the garden under a tree; went next day and saw it still there. watching Russian Doll.

we are funny animals: we kill factory style to feed ourselves and yet we feel for the loss of other birds and animals. I am scared of lizards and have infected him with the fear too and now seem to be losing it a lil bit, and wonder whether I'd mourn a baby lizard's death too if I saw it be laid as an egg. 

India always made me sentimental.

he usually buys overripe fruit. and vegetables. I sometimes drown the worms in a mug of water for half a day, to avoid them crawling out of my kitchen bin. 

what is it that really matters?

and if I see a mosquito right now, I'll abandon everything else to kill it. Either with my bare hands (water on them disables their wings) or by electrocuting them with that racquet insect killer.

One day we will be just nothing.