So this is the first day of winter holiday and all of my friends had gone home and I was walking alone in the rain in the city center full of people shopping for Christmas and I desperately needed something to cheer me up. Don't ask me why I came home with a bouquet of flowers.
Arranging flowers was definitely not as easy as I thought, but they don't look too bad, do they? And most importantly, they do cheer me up. This is what my working desk looks like:
Ok, since we now have flowers and candles (you have no idea how many candles my landlady put in this apartment), perhaps it's time to do a deeper thinking about life (tsah).
I would say that 2011 has been a remarkable year. Started with
January (of course), where my days were dominated with unproductive project meetings, exams, and reading
Logicomix, which made me fall in love with Semantics.
Then
February came with more meetings, fight and tears over Machine Translation project. I remember on
March I didn't really like
turning into 23. But I've been 23 for almost 10 months now and it has been wonderful.
April marked the month of the unforgettable
Eurotrip: passport incident, tulips, Venetian masks, reunion and separation. In
May I became restless. My brother's wedding only made me feel even more homesick than ever. Flew to France for LCT annual meeting, met with a lot of people and found that it was quite fun.
Then came the long-awaited
June. I didn't really care about my exams, I just wanted to get them done and go home. Leaving Malta and the people I became friends with saddened me a lot, but no feeling could compare to reuniting with your family and old friends (yes, and boyfriend). The feeling faded too soon, though, as
July and
August crept slowly and I came into a bitter realization that the place no longer felt like home.
September, I was
back in Europe. How can I describe this month? Those were the loneliest days of my life. It was an awfully cold summer and I felt so miserable living alone with no one to talk to. Fortunately, things changed a lot when
October arrived. I fell in love with this city, the way people bike without caring about the rain, the way every blue sky was something to be thankful for. Also in this month, I gathered the courage to meet with
one of the men who changed my career, and he became my thesis supervisor. The leaves were changing colors and I went to beautiful Norway. Life was perfect.
The turning point of
November was when the Semantic Web project started. Suddenly, life wasn't as perfect :D But it's still okay, though. Now I'm here on one of
December's nights with my flowers and candles. Christmas is coming and with all this spirit of togetherness, I miss
everyone. I wanted to tell you, but there are so many things that I miss. Countless little details that lead me to contemplations, despondency and the hope that everybody is all right.