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After a long break I am glad to introduce a special interview with a special person. Someone that deserves to be called prominent: please allow to introduce to you Anita Kalmane in a way you have always wanted to, but were always afraid to ask. What is hidden behind her AEGEE personality, what did the destiny prepare for her and the most important question: is she in fact a chicken? Read further and find out!
Michael: If you could change three things in your life, what would it be?
Anita: There are things you can change in people around you, there are things you can change in yourself… but in my life in total? No.
M: So what would you like to change in yourself?
A: I would like to a person that sometimes listens to other people more than I do, I would like to be sometimes not so strict, because it leads to people freaking out in such cases and I would like to have a taste.
M: So you think you don’t have a taste?
A: I know I don’t.
M: What do you have instead of a taste?
A: I have brain. When I say “taste”, I mean the taste when you decide which clothes to buy when you’ll go shopping or which place to choose to go for a party.
M: How do you choose your clothes?
A: I don’t! My sister and my mom do. I really hate shopping and they love it. So they choose for me.
M: When you open your wardrobe in the morning, how do you pick out your clothes? Do you call your mom and your sister?
A: After so many years I have developed some basic skills from them.
M: How does this affect your life in AEGEE? How do you separate yourself as an independent person from a function in AEGEE, from the organisation as a symbol and name?
A: When I am with people that don’t know about AEGEE I don’t think about it, because they don’t know it, so it can’t harm the name of AEGEE. But when I am on AEGEE events, whatever I do, I want to make sure that it is not going to harm the image of AEGEE. That is why I wouldn’t get drunk at any statutory event, because it would create a bad image for a CD member.
M: But what about your personal life? You are living, working and eating in the CD house. Where is the border between the person Anita Kalmane and the CD member Anita Kalmane?
A: If I speak with an AEGEE member, when it comes to topics about AEGEE I always speak as a CD member. If I speak as Anita Kalmane, I always make sure that it is a person I can trust and say my personal opinion. But it is very hard to define a concrete border between these two things. I am trying to, but it is very hard in case of relations with AEGEE members.
M: Do you feel the need to separate these two things? Are you searching for your personal and private space?
A: Yes I do, that is why I am trying to get out on the weekends, escape from Brussels. It is nearly impossible to live in this house and avoid AEGEE topics.
M: What is the relative part of your conversations you are leading in this house in percent that are not related to AEGEE?
A: 20%.
M: When are you going to leave AEGEE?
A: I don’t know, I don’t have any plan yet. After AEGEE I would basically like to do the same things as I did before joining the CD. Have a normal life and job, use my time that I have spend for AEGEE for my other hobbies. Unfortunately now I have no time and no money for my other hobbies like skiing, travelling, hiking, going to museums… Especially I like those museums where you can interact, press a button or museums that are different from other ones – e.g., like Museum of Murder.
M: Would you like to murder someone?
A: No! I’m nice.
M: You have never thought of murdering someone?
A: No! It’s against the law.
M: Is this the only reason why you don’t consider murdering someone?
A: Well, I don’t know, it is a pretty good reason and enough not to think about it.
M: Back to your future normal life… Where would this normal life take place?
A: Hopefully somewhere in Europe. But I don’t know what is prepared for me.
M: So do you believe in destiny?
A: Yes, it is just there. I feel it. I don’t think about it, it just is.
M: Don’t you think that it is a sad that everything in your life is already prepared and that you cannot influence it anymore?
A: I believe that destiny has prepared only the general things in your life: whom will you marry, what will be your profession, whom you will love, how you’ll be like. You can influence only the details. For example, your destiny hasn’t prepared what you’re going to eat for breakfast or where you’re going to have a walk. So this you can choose freely.
M: What an incredible amount of freedom like choosing food for breakfast! You’re saying that destiny has also defined whom you will marry in your life. How do you achieve that you’ll actually meet this person and that everything will go as it should?
A: If you’ll listen to your steps, then yes. If you would like to escape from it, you would probably manage, but it would simply come back to you after some time.
M: What kind of person should it be that destiny has prepared for you?
A: Well, I have my version for it, but I don’t know it this is the same as destiny wants to. But it will be a person that likes culture, a person very similar to me. Not a party animal, but somebody who likes to go out every now and then. Someone you can trust, a person you would never need to doubt about. For me this is very obvious.
M: How would you like to meet this person? Is there any nice way to meet a person that is going to be your husband?
A: Well there is a huge truck that is transporting a lot of chicken to the market. The truck driver is completely wasted and smoking a joint and there is a motorbike that crashes into the truck. He would be the hitchhiker that was going with the truck and I…
M: You would be a chicken?
A: Noooo! I am not a chicken, but a human being, I could be going on that motorbike.
M: Last questions for today! Which was first: the egg or the chicken?
A: I know! The egg of course, because the mommy and daddy of the egg were from two different species, they made an egg and then the chicken came out.
M: Very smart answer, thank you, Anita!
Written by guest blogger Michael Makowiecki