Yesterday noon my mom flew back to Toronto, which has left me with a black mood and a broken heart. You'd think with everything I've been through in my life, I'd handle it better… well not really. =(

The distance is murdering us. Everything that I have gained here, all that I love about here, everything that is positive about the collection of migrations I've made, at times none of it helps the way I feel. What I've lost, what I've left behind and what I have to ignore every single day is not a small load. In the perfect world, I would not have had to leave my birth country to start with.

*sigh*…….

Labels: Life, Sad

Today I had a scary experience.

Living with a cat since my arrival in Switzerland, has been quite a learning experience since I never had any sort of a pet before. But of course I'm still very much clueless and inexperienced about many things.

This evening as I was taking a bath, I suddenly heard the cat wailing loudly and in a sharp tone that I had never heard before. I don't know exactly how I jumped out of the bath, got into a towel and got myself to the cat who was laying on the ground in front of the balcony door, screaming in pain and salivating. He was shaking, his breathing was laboured and he seemed pretty scared also. The following 10 minutes consisted of Oliv somehow finding a vet who was still in the office on the evening of December 26th, me somehow keeping the cat calm, getting dressed, putting the cat in his basket and running out of the door all in full panic.

By the time we got to the vet's office the cat was much calmer. The doctor had a good long look at everything and told us that basically there was nothing wrong, other than a mild sore throat. He explained to us a number of possibilities none of which were anything serious, gave us some tips, and suggested that we should have the cat's blood tested [tomorrow] just to be sure. 

So now we're back home and all is well, and the cat is back at eating up to his eyes and demanding petting every 10 seconds. But the time between when I heard the cat's screams and when the doctor told us that all is fine, I experienced a scare and panic that I've perhaps experienced only 2-3 times in my entire life. It was an absolute nightmare. =(  

Labels: Cat, Life, Sad, Scary

"Hello old friend. And here we are, you and me, on the last page."

*sniff*

*sigh* 

Well, that was quite a sad and terribly abrupt end to the Pond story. Left me with teary eyes. =/ The story itself was pretty great of course. But still, I have a feeling that the end was a bit... "blah". More could have been said/done with the Ponds' final appearance. Not the saddest goodbye in the Who universe so far [that one was Rose's... always... at least for me...], but still pretty tragic. Why did they have to end up entirely out of reach anyway?

Labels: Doctor Who, Entertainment, Sad, Sci-Fi, TV

I can hardly believe this... one of my favourite actors. I loved his acting in every role I had seen him in, from "The Green Mile" [which still breaks my heart every time I watch it] to his latest role in "The Finder" series. May he rest in peace.

Labels: Entertainment, Motion Picture, Movies, Sad, TV

Labels: Sad, Science, Space

Earlier tonight, I received an email from the wife of a very dear, very special friend, Jack D. Logan, informing us [his friends] that Jack has passed away. I'm still in shock. I thought he was pretty much through his health problems and well on his way to recovery... I have no idea how this happened. All I know is that I'm sad, and shocked, and cold, and..... *sob*

My heartfelt condolences go to his family and friends, and everyone who was lucky enough to know him.

On a bit of a personal direction... Gosh, this thread of me losing friends has to stop. 2011 has been gloomy in this way thus far... first a childhood friend of mine passed away, almost at the same time someone I thought of as a friend turned out to be anything but, then another friend passed away and now this..... *sight*.... =(

Jack will be sorely missed. I will most of all miss the music he shared with me....

A little dedication to Jack:

Labels: Friends, Life, Music, Sad

I have no idea how I didn't already know about this. It's horrible... bad bad bad bad news for the world of music. =((( No more E.S. Posthumus... that's a real pain. Franz Vonlichten of E.S. Posthumus passed away last May. Today I was looking to see if there's any new albums from them, and I landed on this note written by Helmut Vonlichten, announcing the passing of his brother. =""(( It does not mention what happened though...

Gosh... it's not as if good music is easy [heck, or even possible!!] to come by nowadays. E.S. Posthumus was a real gem, and definitely one of my favourite bands of the current era. I really love their music so much... *sigh*... what a talent...  *siiiiigh*... this is a real tragedy... *snifff*....

Now I only hope that at some point we will hear something new from Helmut Vonlichten.... *sigh*..... 

Labels: Music, Sad

I know, I've been quiet lately. I know you folks have been expecting to hear/read quite a bit more about how things are developing here. Well, truth is I recently lost someone of weight in my life under rather strange circumstances. As a result, I've fallen back a bit from all forms of online communications, while I'm trying to deal with this. But I'm still here and I do read all that you write.

This is quite difficult, I'm completely heart-broken and to all honesty it couldn't have come at a more complicated point in my life. Nonetheless, I'll get past it soon. I'll survive... always do.

-

P.S.: As far as music therapy goes, I came across this track a few days ago quite accidentally on MTV DE. And I totally fell in love with the band.

Labels: Aasemoon, Friends, Life, Music, Sad

Oh nooooooo! My favourite sea creature has just passed away! =(( I wanted to adopt him! Awwwwwwhhhh.... too bad!

 

 

"Management and staff at the Oberhausen Sea Life Centre were devastated to discover that oracle octopus Paul, who achieved global renown during the recent World Cup, had passed away overnight. "Paul amazed the world by correctly predicting the winners of all Germany's World Cup clashes, and then of the final," said Sea Life Centre Manager Stefan Porwoll."

Fuss story here: What's New :: Birmingham :: SEA LIFE

Labels: Animals, Entertainment, Sad

Sadness, shock, and disbelief. An era in the history of music is over. Rest in peace Michael Jackson, I hope you find the peace now that you never seemed to have found in your lifetime.

Few of my favorites…..

Labels: Life, Music, Sad

A few hours ago, I received an email from the last.fm team saying this:

“Hi Aasemoon,
You're getting this email because you have been using Last.fm Radio.
Today we're announcing an important upcoming change: Last.fm Radio will require a small subscription of €3.00 /month. You'll receive a 30 track free trial to try before you buy. All other Last.fm features will remain free.
Why, you're probably asking? Read on about the change here:
http://www.last.fm/about/subscriptionradio
We hope you'll continue to support our service,
- The Last.fm Team”

Well… I’ve been a very serious user of last.fm since August 2006. There’s much about it that I’ve found very useful and very  neat, as I’ve mentioned in some of my previous posts. I’ve used it for discovering new music, looking into the listening habits of myself and my friends, sharing music with my friends and… much more. But well, now I feel that this may be the end of my serious use of last.fm.

I have to mention,  €3.00 /month really isn’t that big of a price at all… but that’s not really the point here. For me, it’s mainly a matter of it “not feeling right” any longer. I’ve been having uncomfortable feelings about last.fm for a while now, as it’s been showing symptoms of becoming one of those monster size money-loving companies. I guess it started when they introduced limitations to the number of tracks one could put in a playlist. Then they decided that non-subscribers can’t play the playlists at all. Then as a result, my player gadget stopped working. Very uncool. Then recently I read the rumors that last.fm has been handing over user listening data to RIAA. Of course last.fm totally denies that, but from some of the behavior I’ve been observing from last.fm, it’s not sounding so unbelievable. And now…. now they want to charge us for listening to radio! They’re now requiring subscription for what’s one of the most basic capabilities of this service, and oh yes, they’re giving me exactly 5 days to decide about it. =) Well, thank you very much, I don’t need your 5 days. There’s no way in hell that I am paying you for listening to radio. Most specially since 95% of the stations that I listen to, play FREE music. Yes. I listen to the Demoscene tag radio, Chiptune tag radio, and similar tag / artist stations. And the people who produced this music, uploaded their work to last.fm freely. So why the heck should I pay for listening to it? And I listen to the libraries of my friends. Which I can just as easily do, on other free services. It’s radio for crying out loud. The web is full of radio stations, and last.fm does have competitors. Well as I said… it’s not about the money. It’s about the idea. It’s about a form of betrayal. It’s about all of us serious users being taken advantage of. I would not pay this fee even if it was €0.0000003 /month.   

So what happens now… is that I’m going to start seriously looking into alternatives to the last.fm radio. As to whether or not I will still use the client to scrobble my listening data… I will have to see. That capability is till unique, but given how much I’m disliking last.fm right now, I’m not sure whether or not I will care. So well, if any of you my friends reading this article is familiar with some good alternatives, please let me know.

=S

Update: A friend of mine, who thanks to my bad news is now completely ticked off, also posted an article about this. Check it out!

Labels: last.fm, Music, Sad, Web

Labels: Life, Sad, Sci-Fi