Women's 7 deadly sins: # 2 Chocolate

When God created man, she was only doing a trial job. Or according to another interpretation
when God created man, she was drunk and horny. Well, both give you a hint about the result... The second project worked was much improved, but still - it pains me to admit this - not completely without weak points.

I yet have to meet the woman who is not slave to her own cravings for something sweet. Ice cream. The Haribo Collection. And especially chocolate. Chocolate are rumoured to work as an aphrodisiac, to release endorphins and as such even serve as a substitute for sex.

Based on how much you like sweets and how much you depend on them to survive, I must be super woman. I am still waiting for the invention of the chocolate diet (okay, for the chocolate diet that actually serves to make you lose weight). But lately I am especially addicted to a super yummy chocolate bar, which has started to infiltrate Germany's sweets shelves: Cadbury's "Wunderbar".



The Wunderbar has a center of chewy caramel with peanut butter covered in chocolate.


It is sweeeeeet. Despite being that sweet it also has a distinctive saltiness which goes well with the peanut butter. I love it so much, I have become a real addict. And that when I am not normally a great fan of all things peanut. Snickers, peanuts, Mr. Tom, Peanut butter etc are usually rather tolerated than loved. Still the "Wunderbar" is everything its name promises and has me completely hooked.

Finally an explanation

I guess normally, when you start a blog this should be the first thing, that you explain what you are going to do. But I have to admit, I started this blog for various reasons and I was not quite sure how I would be going about it.


I called the blog "Letters from Bedlam" in reference to the well-known psychiatric hospital in London. Because my life feels a bit like a madhouse sometimes. And if you wonder about my nick "GeishaX", that is an old name I have been using online ever since my first times on the web. So for well over 10 years. Back then I liked the name, it has a relation to Japan to which I have an affinity. It stands for an entertainer versed in the arts, something I would like to be (without much hope). And the X was meant to supply a touch of mystery, coolness and style. (Mangareaders please note that in "Get Backers" a unknown boy child was found inside a bag with the name tag "Makube" on it. An X was added to stand for the unknown factor, and Makube X then became Makubex.
It is a long time ago that I made all that up, by now I just use the name because I feel that it has in a way become my name and I am not overly thinking about any of these things. (so when people meet me only for the first time as GeishaX and feel it as a come on I usually don't even get it until I am directly told about it. So forget all you know or think you know about Geishas - I am an entirely different type of person. I won't play koto or recite poems or laugh in an artful and come-hither way. I won't bow. Unless I feel you deserve it. And you'll have to work hard for that. My avatar picture is a colored-in cut-out from "Akuma de Sourou" (The devil does exist).

So here is what you can expect: I don't know. Or rather I don't know the limitations. Or let's just say: anything goes. It was never meant to be a manga blog. But of course I will write about the things that I am currently juggling in my mind. And as I am going through a rather hardcore manga phase, you are going to be served mangas till you are heartily sick of them. (What? You already are? Sissies! No endurance. You better brace yourself for more of the same fare.)

But in the end I will just ramble about whatever is currently on my mind.
As you see I have started two "series"-threads. The "Parallel Universe"-Series (which basically are a what would my life be like if things had gone different-thingy) and the "Women's 7 deadly sins" (a series about things that women like - maybe too much). I will definitely deliver more blogs in both series, though it might become difficult to decided onto which 7 sins I am going to pick - the pool from which to chose is to big for such harsh limitations.

Back on Horseback

I believe that 3 out of 10 girls undergo a phase of horse madness. I certainly did. When I was a girl I took riding lessons at a riding school called "Bonanza Ranch" in Katzweiler near Kaiserslautern. The horse I was riding was Crusoe. I think he was a Haflinger, definitely had the colouring. The Bonanza Ranch was not a very refined riding place back then - it looks a lot more professional today. The motto was more something like "up on the horse, have fun and try not to fall down". Still it WAS fun for as long as this phase lasted. Then I swapped the saddle for a motorbike and boys seemed even more interesting than horses, so I gave up on horse riding.

But now - years and years later - I wanted to do some sports and here in the countryside the only thing I could find in the mornings was some kind of bum-shaping gymnastics for housewives or fitness studios with bad techno music and over-cheery studio-tanned animators with very wide and very false smiles. So I decided I just had to start my own thing and I was lucky to find 3 other mothers with similar problems. The one sport that all four of us had an interest in was horse riding. The marsh countryside where I stay is horse country really. There are lots of stables out here. We decided on a riding school 3 villages away and started lessons there in October. All four of us have a little prior experience with horse riding - but a long time ago.
I am usually riding Mandy. She's a brown mare - technically a large pony, but she could almost pass as a small horse. That's her on the portrait above and she's the one on the left side here:

I liked her from the start. She is gentle and kind; she likes getting cleaned and even helps me putting on her bridle (I don't think I could do it without her help). She does not like to go in the front of the formation however and can be very stubborn about this.
I was able to reconfirm that riding is indeed sports. It's not just sitting on the horse and letting yourself be idly carried about. Today Mandy was not having a good day (maybe that time of the month ...) and was unwilling to do anything on her own. I had to convince her with everything I had. Afterwards I felt tired and my legs still have a distinct jelly-o-feeling.
Sometimes in the morning I look out of the window see the fog and the uninviting look of the November weather outside and think I would prefer to stay home, roll up on the couch and watch anime. But once I'm at the stable I'm okay. And once I'm on horseback I'm glad I came.

Cat in the box

I was reading the manga "Extra Heavy Syrup" (see picture) by Ogawa Yayoi lately and it got me interested in the concept of quantum mechanics and the thought experiment of Schrödingers cat. I'm not a scientist and I like to transfer difficult ideas into a context that I can understand. I can not claim to understand quantum mechanics, but I found the idea of it and the experiment of Schrödingers cat fascinating. Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961) was an austrian physicist who apparently had a very lively imagination and a disturbed relationship to cats. In 1935 he came up with the following theoretical experiment: Imagine a closed box in which you put a cat and a canister containing poisonous gas which is triggered by a device with an unstable radioactive nucleus with a 50% chance to decay within one hour. Leave both for said hour. If you think in the lines of the typical human brain you would expect that after that hour the cat is either dead or alive. If you are a follower of quantum mechanics there would be a state/time at which the dead cat and the living cat co-exist. The intent of Schrödinger's modell was to prove the absurdity and/or paradox of quantum mechanics, which was based on the behaviour of atoms and obviously does not easily translate into our every day life.



I like to think of Quantum Mechanics as "anything goes as long as we can't see it". (because "every possibility that is not proven to be wrong must hence be correct" just sounds a bit too wild). Let's say I lock my children into their room and leave the house for an hour for a quiet walk around the romantic November scenery of northern Germany. They could completely destroy their rooms (most likely scenario) or they could sit patiently and wait for me to return. Does that mean in terms of quantum mechanics I have two sets of three children for the time of that walk? Three realistic seeming children who would completely misbehave and go for each others throats and another set of three children who sit quietly to be released from their room possibly while reading Dostojewski? As much as I would like to see that, I know I am stuck with the first set. And of course I know that my ideas are far from Schrödinger's - his idea of the cat being simultanously both alive and dead was referring to the quantum superposition which goes back to the theory that unstable nuclei undergo a in-between state of transition in which they are both decayed and undecayed. It is a theory that does not go down easily in every day reality.
Just imagine my face if I would ever open the door while realitiy is still in quantum mechanical modus and see 6 children sitting in the room - all mine. Or wait - who says that only two possibilities can co-exist. There could be a third set of my children performing open heart-surgery on the goldfish. And a fourth set talking swedish and discussing the best investment strategies and the future of world finances. The more I think about it the less inclined I feel to ever go on a walk all by myself.