Ioanes Resl

We’ve seen what the first two phases of this condition can do to a person and now we would like to round it up by the final two stages.
Phase three, or the adjustment phase is where the individual is getting assimilated by the new culture. And there are a lot of ways how and when this can happen. One big thing is that you now know “how things are working”. You feel a psychological balance, more confident. You don’t feel so isolated anymore and get back your sense of humor (in case you are blessed with the dark talent of making cynical jokes all the time, you may have never lost it in the first hand).
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I think if there is any topic that deserves to be mentioned here, it’s the famous culture shock. I had my first encounter with this condition when I bought a travel guide for my trip to Pakistan. The book series of the same name explained all the little obstacles on the way to eternal happiness (or whatever you’re up to). I thought of it more as a creative title than any real problem you can encounter. A admittedly kind of naïve thought though.
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the fabric of corruption. The here used Costa Rican 1000 Colones bill is about worth 1.9 USD or 1.4 Eur. A generic qualified worker earns 218,037 Colones (421 USD or 309 Eur) per month (of course 8 hours for 6 days a week). This means our generic qualified worker would earn 805.75 Colones per hour (12,4 USD or 9.1 Eur) or not even a “rojo” how it’s called sometimes. Together with underpaid work, exploited by multinational corporations in the cloak of development aid (”we could always go to China”) is this the perfect swamp in which to grow corruption sopping monsters.

5 days are gone by since the n-day (empathizing here a bit the latino heritage) and our visitor from the planet Utero is taking her first – metaphorical – steps on her new home planet. These however, consist mainly of food processing and sleeping. She doesn´t care too much about our company and if she does it´s probably because she´s either hungry or the leftovers in her diaper are bothering her. Shaking limbs, unsteady look and no interaction except incomprehensible babbling sounds not even her baby fellows can understand. All in all she has more in common with an 80 year old autistic Alzheimer patient that suffers from Parkinson’s disease than with one of the babies the Disney like advertisement world shows us every day. Thing is that despite her obvious lacks of social and motoric skills, I can´t let my eyes of her.

the small miracles in the front yard, captured by the amazing miracle of the reverse lens technique.

After the odyssey of applying in Argentina for a student visa I was kind of afraid of the things that awaited me, when I applied for a residence in Costa Rica. Beside the obvious advantage of not having to leave the country, I won’t ever have the problem again here, that they won’t let me enter the country without a return ticket. One of the most stupid things for a country with open borders (in a European context; if you go from CR to Panama, crossing in Sixaola, you can pretty much walk over there without having any passport or ID).
So I decided once again to play the bureaucracy game. With some help from my family in Austria, who sent me the legalized paper stuff and J we went to the migraciones. And while the Costa Rican embassy in Austria is kind of a lame ass when it comes to the paper work, the authorities here are always good for a surprise. One week after I applied for the visa a fax came. A fax. On a Saturday. And it was of course the positive news that my application was allowed. That’s really a big relief, considering that I was afraid it would take about a year like in other counries. But yet again, never underestimate the power of bureaucracy.

work on the tetralogy of a day series, part of the third (evening stroll) segment. 3d model, rendered and edited.

It’s one of these things one doesn’t even bother to think about before it actually hits you like a sledge hammer. The thing they call “nesting instinct”. That’s the wired urge of a becoming mother to prepare – yes you may have guest it – the nest. And while I watched J’s efforts to clean our little apartment with the mighty chemical coils the gods – we may as well say a well known supermarket chain around here – have supplied us with, and of course had some fun on her account, it started to affect me as well. Contagious bastard hormones. I began to fix some electric stuff, made the balloon light I was thinking about the last month and felt the need to organize my things as well. A reason mybe to set up my website again originated in this instinct. Maybe it’s not the worst thing that could happened. Not like the weight reserve I put on for… no idea, if it’s for winter, there has to be another ice age.