Bonsai-Induced IKEA Nostalgia

Quite the blog post title, no?

The back story's pretty simple. One day a man arrived on campus, aiming to offload some plants on undergrads with parents with bulging wallets. There was the standard array of cacti etc, but also some mildly exuberant plants like flytraps and bonsais. A bonsai caught my eye as I was walking past, and I figured "why the hell not, I'll buy it". So why the hell not, I bought it (along with a tub of bonsai takeaway that will last the little bugger eight years) and took it home.

Guess what, the sly capitalist flower seller didn't include a base for the pot, which promptly turned out to have two holes in the bottom. It was a long day at uni, I did some work and went to the pool, so I failed to notice this minute detail straight off the bat. As such, the bonsai was living in the green bag it came with, and it was sloppily fed from a cup every Monday & Friday. On the bonsai's 13th day in my room, I decided that enough's enough and opted to roll to IKEA and get some sort of base for the pot.

First obstacle - what the hell is the size of the pot? I don't have a ruler, but my notebook's graph paper. As such, I took my graph paper notebook and rammed it against the sides of the pot, unraveling the mystery of its dimensions. Lifehack protip, kids - each one of those graph paper squares is 5 millimetres. Now you too can throw away your ruler and live the Rumpy life!

With that out of the way, I caught a bus to IKEA... and I took my time walking around the whole display, looking at things, thinking of things. IKEA's very international, and we have some elements from IKEA in Poland as well. I'm not saying the entire house is made from IKEA things, as my mom's far too aesthetic to let that thing slide, but last time around I caved and got the exact same wastepaper basket I have in both the Polish houses. No, I don't take said wastepaper basket with me when we go from one house to the other, there are two separate copies of said item. And now a third one is residing next to me. Now I caved and got some nice plates, with leaves and colours, to replace the cheepnis schmuck I've been using up to now. I'm gonna be here for two more years, may as well make the place slightly more comfy. Hence the bonsai and the nice plates. I take a weird sense of comfort from the fact that I could have gone to the IKEA which we frequent in Poland and picked up the very same plates.

I remember when I got all nostalgic the first time I went to the UK IKEA, as its overall smell and nature reminded me of the Polish one. Bot, who accompanied me for the trip, mocked me for it pretty hard. Screw him :P

I also picked up a little wooden bowl for the purpose of mixing spices easily. Reminded me a bit of the wooden bowl in which my grandparents kept walnuts and a nutcracker. The nostalgia just keeps on coming!

But wait! There's more! For whatever reason, on the bus trip home, I got nostalgic :P This time around, my thoughts carried me to the return bus trip from a ski camp in Italy which I attended around 2007 or so. Everybody was tired, I was kicking back, relaxing, one ear had Velvet Revolver's "Loving The Alien" and the other ear had a chick who was mean to me all camp long trying awkwardly to say that maybe "final impressions would count, not the first ones". I met up with the people from the ski camp by pure accident some time later on the standard mountain my family skis on, said chick wasn't present as she overslept. Someone mentioned that she wanted to go out with me. Those were the days when I still attracted females, I had a bit more hair on my head, a bit less on my face, and less fat on the gut :P for whatever reason, I reminisced about that in spite of its absolute lack of significance, with Slash's solo playing in my head. Screw the haters, Contraband had some really nice tracks. That record taught me all the basics of writing songs.

Music-wise, I'm working on Nakpat tracks, putting together a running order in my head. Some oldies, some new ones. Should be good.

Okay, time to end this. Got some pizza to attend to. My bonsai is looking menacing with a mildly asian-looking, curled-corner saucer as the base. Life's good, even though it's not really that amazing. I'm a big boy, gotta fly out of the nest, and be less self-centered about how every last thing is bad and how much I hate life and miss Poland. Gotta keep moving forward. See you all next time, and of course take care everybody.