To my friends

Thank you all for being in my life this year! It made it so much richer and colourful and brought a lot of happiness into it.
Thank you also for the difficult moments we had to overcome; I could learn a lot from them, which helped me to grow a bit more to whom I should be (even if the moments themselves were not the most pleasant ;).
And also in good times, I was astonished by your many talents, your friendlyness, your generosity, your frankness, your honesty - just to mention a few. I just hope I also can bring some joy into your lives.

To all of you I wish a peaceful, joyful, interesting, and blessed new year!

Hope to see you again soon in 2009!
:)

revising beliefs

Recently I once again realised that I'm invariably getting older... - ok nothing new, and I admit I don't really mind (- yet?)
But there was one characteristic of a growing up person which keeps striking me as I observe it on some people around me:

They start becoming serious. Not in the 'no fun' way of mentality. But rather in a very fascinating way: they start to link their actions to their beliefs and convictions.

Maybe at first this seems trivial - they probably were doing this all the time one might think. But in fact this doesn't seem to be the case. Somehow very often people - especially when they are still young - have very strong (sometimes unreflected) opinions and expectations on many things and other people; without, however, living up to the standards they set. So when growing up, some of them start to revise these standards, to shape and correct their childhood beliefs, and to follow them themselves.

This process seriously intrigues me, as all of a sudden people take on the responsibility for their lifes and themselves; they are no longer just a passive product of what others imposed on them. Instead, they become active and face a challenging task, as if they were woken up from sleep, ready to change the world.

24th December

The Birth of Jesus

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register.

So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."
[Luke 2:1-14]



A joyful and blessed christmas to all of you! I wish you to be able to leave all the social stress behind and arrive in your heart at what you are actually celebrating: God becoming human, to save every single one of us.

23rd December

Prepare for tomorrow:

Tyli naktis, šventa naktis!
Viskas miega, tik dar vis.
Motinėlė ten budi viena.
Kūdikis su meilia šypsena
Ilsisi, miega ramiai,
Ilsisi, miega ramiai.

Tyli naktis, šventa naktis!
Pildos dieviška mintis:
Viešpats, tapęs mažu vaikeliu,
Žada sieloms malonių gausių
Savo šventu gimimu
Savo šventu gimimu

Tyli naktis, šventa naktis!
Vyksta meilės paslaptis.
Angelų giesmė skamba nakčia,
nešdama piemenims žinią šią:
Jau Išganytojas čia!
Jau Išganytojas čia!

also possible:

Klusa nakts, svēta nakts!
Visi dus. Nomodā
Vēl ir Jāzeps un Marija
Kūtī, Dāvida pilsētā.
Jēzus silītē dus,
Jēzus silītē dus.

Klusa nakts, svēta nakts!
Ganiem Dievs novēl Pats
Dzirdēt eņģeļus slavējam,
Tuvu, tālu skandinām:
Kristus - Glābējs ir klāt!
Kristus - Glābējs ir klāt!

Klusa nakts, svēta nakts!
Dieva Dēls, Tava acs
Mirdz mums dievišķā skaidrībā.
Nu ir dvēsele pestīta,
Jo Tu dzimis par mums!
Jo Tu dzimis par mums!


or if you are a conservative person, stick to the original:

Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht!
Alles schläft, einsam wacht
Nur das traute hochheilige Paar,
Holder Knabe mit lockigem Haar,
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh,
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh.

Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht!
Gottes Sohn, o wie lacht
Lieb’ aus deinem holdseligen Mund,
Da uns schlägt die rettende Stund’,
Christ, in deiner Geburt,
Christ, in deiner Geburt!

Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht!
Hirten erst kund gemacht;
Durch der Engel Halleluja
Tönt es laut von fern und nah’;
Christ der Retter ist da,
Christ der Retter ist da!

either way, oil your voices so you can fully join in tomorrow night! :)

22nd December

back.

it was a wonderful time at my former home - so many nice moments with people that have grown on me and that i missed :)

spending time with you was like a christmas gift: something wished for for a long time, somehow uncertain, and then a lovely surprise!

and i learned something: the most beautiful thing of performing music is to make people happy. of course it can be enjoyable to play for oneself, but it is nothing compared to looking into the shiny eyes of people whose hearts are joyful because you played for them, and the music opened up their heart to the beauty of the world.
it does not always happen, but when it does it's a miracle!

21st December

a rather interesting way to produce sql injections... ;)

20th December

Life can be so beautiful, once one jumps out of some routine which keeps one so busy that no clear thought comes to one's mind. But once that is gone, you look around and realise how beautiful this world is, how many good things there are, and feel full of love for this world and its inhabitants - Life itself then becomes such joy :)

The thing that makes me hopeful is that this beauty is so varied and everywhere, so one can find it wherever one is. It is 'just' the mindset needed for finding it - which might be a bit more difficult to keep during our selfmade stress of everyday routines; but I do believe it is possible.

19th December

As I'm currently kinda traveling I am afraid that this calendar will lack some entries.. however, i got something funny and geeky in the mail which is too funny to not share.. enjoy the spirit :)

                      _/\_
                      > _<
                      /` `.
                    .' ' o \
                   ( ()   @ '.
                  .-'  *_.-'-;
                .' 0 Q    ()  `-.
               / @     o .   *   )
               `-...-""-    '-~'`
              _.'`  Q *   0   @`-.
            .'    o   .     *    '-.
           / @     .___.~-'     ()  `\
          (    ()    *    Q'.__Q   *.'
           '-.-' `--._  @         ``-.
         _.-'   @      __.-'~'-.  @  `-.
       .'    *    ..-'       o        0 `)
      /  0.-~-._       0  *    _.~-.*__.'
      '._       ()  '-.____.-'Q     . '-.
         ;--' Q   *         *     o    @ '-.
      .-' *   '.___ ..~ - .    0     ()   Q '.
     / @    o       *       _.''~.._____.--'`-.
    '-.___Q   .  0     ()     @     *    @`;_*8*_
    .':.  `'c___c   .___.-~  Q  o .=..=.   |\ \\ |
   /.  ':.  /. .\  0     @  _____((-\/-))__|\\ \\|
  ; ':.  ':.\_T_/: _______ |-__-----||-----| \\ \|
  |.  ':.  /`   `\  ||__||_|_\/     ||     |\ \\ |
   \:.  ':(/     \) |""  |____|\    ||     |\\ \\|
    '::.__'/';-;'\ (=)==(=)==(=)\"""~~"""""| \\ \|
          ()/   \()

16th December

What a beautiful feeling if someone is showing appreciation towards one. Maybe it is not always an easy thing to do, and people often tend to say 'oh, he/she knows very well how much I appreciate them'.
However, I am not so sure of this, and there is nothing we loose when opening up our hearts and telling someone about the joy they are bringing into our lives just by being there. Maybe it takes some courage to overcome our pride, admitting that our life would be less beautiful without them, but what better gift can you give to a person than telling them that you are grateful to know them?

15th December

Two interesting observations: it is scary how quickly anger and frustration can come back, even after a good achievment. and it is as astonishing how good it can do to then let things be and do something else. it is a real relief then to find that people also see other abilities in oneself and even choose to rely on them and one can give them a hand to do something amazing.

14th December

inauguration of my personal skiing season! :) it was great fun, nice snow, nice company, and will be nice muscle pain by tomorrow morning. again there were many nice thoughts in my head, but now i'm too tired to put them down... maybe some other day :)

13th December

It sounds so trivial, but it is so difficult to get it right: to put the appropriate tone in what you say. If you think of it, this is not so surprising - in the end one is trying to firstly squeeze some thoughts or feelings into concrete language, which already can cause so many misunderstandings. secondly, very often one has a more or less conscious opinion about the person one is talking to and conveys a lot of this in one's manner of addressing them. this might not even be wanted, but bears the potential to seriously (and miraculously) upset the other one. So if some totally unexpected behaviour happens in communication, it could be a good indicator for taking a closer look on the issue.

12th December

At the beginning of this advent calendar someone asked me to put some pictures of christmas-romantic munich, and finally this town has done me the favour of putting on some nice white fluffy coat. it is really nice, especially further out of the centre, where the snow makes everything so silent, peaceful, and pretty.

I even found a new friend which you can see on top of the page :) And I found a hilarious idea for a gift, if someone desperately feels like giving one to me..

11th December

Snow.. :) It was just lovely to see the flakes swirl through the air shining under the light of the street lamps. Simply beautiful... and so playful! it makes me happy each time I have the privilege to see it.
The sensation of snowflakes melting on my face and sticking to my eyelashes and brows was so refreshing and when I came home seeing my icicled red face in the mirrow gave me a really good laugh and mood.
Can't wait to jump in the snow again! Fingers crossed, the skis are ready, maybe this weekend...

10th December

"I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought, nor what I liked"

[CS. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters]

9th December

just as i looked into my mailbox, i saw that there are 2222 emails in it.. probably most of them are not important at all, most of them came to me on some random mailinglist and not from someone in particular who wanted to tell something just to me.

somehow there seems to be a correspondence to oral communication. people so often keep saying things, which might even be entertaining, but not addressed to anyone in particular and not really conveying something substantiable. i am conscious of doing this myself, sometimes just for socialising and (at least trying) to make people feel at ease. but also to avoid to have to discuss something serious and unpleasant. it's even possible to observe people being conscious of such issue but continuously avoiding clearing it up until they kinda can not help it anymore. but then, i guess, it's human.. because addressing these things takes quite some courage, as one - at least for some time - has to put down one's disguise and take a stance on who one really is. in some ways it is quite a risk, but also i think there's a big likelyhood of a bigger gain in the sense of that an addressed problem can never grow into such monster as an ignored one..

and also another thing. truth and honesty might be unpleasant at times. but (maybe especially then) they are a sign of appreciation for one another.

8th December

Too tired to write much... but fascinated by mirrow occurrences in life, like a role swap in theater.

7th December

What is advent? It's the time for reconsidering one's route and position.. and then to readjust and try again, if things are not the way they ought to be.
Sounds simple and straightforward.. but already in small things in life it turns out to be quite challenging.. so I guess this means: re-try until you get it right!

6th December

Day of St Nicholas If you know someone called Nicholas or sth similar you can congratulate them to their nameday today ;)

Or maybe you are searching for another way of showing some appreciation to people around you? You could try sending real paper christmas cards to them... I find it so nice each year you find a card from a friend far away, of whom you haven't heard in a while and you realise they still didn't forget about you. To me this is quality contact, so much better than all this facebooking, just because it is so real.

The only thing about this game is to not write just to get a letter back (but I guess this is valid for all kind of gifts you give). But then, if you think of it, it's not a big problem when you write just because you feel like it :)

5th December

Quite often in our society one can find the attitude of minding noone's business, paired with the expectation to be left alone and not to be bothered in one's own actions. And often, one could think, this attitude seems quite fine: I go my way, you go yours, as long as we don't get cross we're free to do or not do whatever we please.

However, today I was told a story that shows a drastic counter example to this way of behaviour and highlights that still everyone has a responsibility for the people around them, known or not.

One woman was arriving exhausted and very upset. She told: "There was total chaos on the underground! A young girl had thrown herself in front of the train. When I was arriving at the platform, there was a woman completely shocked and in a mess. What she told me was so terrible; she said, she had observed this girl, standing near the border of the platform, crying desperately. She was thinking of speaking to her, but didn't dare to - and then decided to ignore it! So when the train was entering the station she just saw the girl throwing herself under it.."

I wonder now... how much responsibility does this woman have for the girl's death? And then, I wonder if objectively matters, as she seemed to feel responsible, as her speaking to that desperate girl could have saved her? And... how often could we have helped someone, just by asking how they were feeling, showing that it is not totally uninteresting for the whole world what is happening to them?

There are a lot more thoughts going round in my head, I can't really put them down.. Just one thing really pushes forward; it concerns the way our society is treating younger people.. For a whole huge branch of our economy they are the perfect 'victims' as with all their insecurities they are very easy to seduce and at the same time rather unprotected as they are trying to break free from their parents. So in some sense they are perfect for making money from them, showing them all the nice, glittery, perfect images of fake relationships, friendship, and love, but without EVER telling them about the real impact all these thing will have on them, once they got tangled up in them. And there often seems noone they can turn to, once this whole 'perfect' world comes crashing down on them. So what should become of them? Obviously only few of them take the option of jumping in front of a train. But they still are so often left to themselves to deal with all these pain they have suffered.
I don't think this is fair.. Now don't tell me 'life isn't fair'... it's no use in this place, 'cause there is something everyone can do just by opening up their eyes and looking at the people around.

4th December

Traditionally the day of Saint Barbara. Here it is custom at this day to cut branches from the bare trees and put them in a vase so the 'dead' wood will revive again and bear fresh leaves and flowers at christmas. I think it is quite a symbolic meaning for the time of advent, when consciousness of the worlds darkness and misery is starting to break away and to show some glimpse of light and hope.

But then I wonder if it is still possible to notice all these unobtrusive things, starting from darkness and silence, in our ever more glaring and loud world... and if anyone even wants to percieve them.. There are hard to find, as they are often outside of our world of daily routines and habits which doesn't know of much time to breathe and look around. But somehow I think it might be worth it to look for them nevertheless.

3rd December

I seriously started studying for a terrible exam.. to get at least something done I dumped the pc under the table and sat just me and my script.. for several hours. Actually I was surprised that some things seemed not so difficult anymore, after overcoming my general aversion to the subject..

Studying was interesting, especially as I never would have thought that attempting to study logic might turn out so effective for instant meditation about all the worlds issues. In fact, there were so many interesting thoughts flowing through my mind, but at the same time it felt like a dream so I could not really catch them and make them stay..

Now I have a hard time remembering them; but I wonder if they are still somewhere in my mind, ready to come up at the right moment?

2nd December

well... at least still for me, as i havent slept yet..

the reason - as you could probably guess - is some piece of badly coordinated team work... but anyway, this situation hopefully will give me some incentive to take some more responsibility next time and organize it better..

apart from that.. there were a good amount of interesting impressions today which i realized because i decided to leave my earplugs out for the next time (let's see if i will manage till christmas). i tried this before and it was an interesting period, as breaking one habit often brings you to try completely 'random' things alongside your daily paths. (it starts from literally changing paths by taking another road on the way to the station, or taking a train one stop too far even when not exactly knowing the direction, but also just doing things differently can be really interesting..)

the most interesting encounter i had today:
a woman selling chestnuts offered me one as a present after i had finally managed to unlock my bike at the station in that terrible cold. she told it would warm my fingers.. it was really sweet and at the same time a clever move: she actually wanted to talk to me and ask me to not put my bike too close to the stand as it had been blocking the electricity box... of course this was not a problem at all, but i really admired this way of bringing some stranger into a good mood before asking some favour of them..

1st December

Waking up this morning, I realised that it was time to open the first door of my little christmas calendar. As every year, I am happy about it but at the same time worried:
there are exams coming up, a lot of things are to be done before christmas, time is running out, there's lack of presents, too many christmas celebrations...
for this reason I wanted to start some sort of calendar on my blog; for me and for you to remind ourselves to think about what we are preparing to celebrate, to reconsider some habits and attitudes, so there won't be too much of this feeling: 'christmas?!?! already?!?! but i'm not there yet...'
take care

CRACK!

... and I really got a scare from that unexpected and loud noise.. but actually it was just a pine cone I had put on the heating exploding and spitting kernels all over the place :)

unexpected answer

some time ago I was wondering about what actually characterizes men (or women respectively). thanks to my special oracle (aka skype status messages) I found a surprising hint:

Real men write PostScript!

Just that it makes me wonder about real women....

munich loves you

the crux with being innovative

it seems a sad fact that in order to be innovative and form something nice and cool, you have to really know the basics... so no way around the old stuff :(

about life

"When I hear somebody sigh, "Life is hard," I am always tempted to
ask, "Compared to what?"" -- Sydney Harris

land unter

Wenn einem das Wasser bis zum Hals steht, sollte man den Kopf nicht hängen lassen."

[Karl Valentin]

about the importance of saying goodbye

Ever since I first moved away from home I have felt the urge to properly say goodbye to people and not part in anger or resentment. The reason for this was quite plain: some people dear to me were of bad health and risk was that I might not see them again. Starting from this reasoning, I realised that I could not at all take for granted to meet anyone a 'next time'. So saying goodbye and clearing things up became important to me and looking back it seems a good choice.

Why I am writing this now? I arrived in town today after some months of absence and was struck by a headline telling a 16 year old boy had died having a crash with his motorbike. I felt sad about it, but the real pain came when I met one of my friends who told me that she had spoken and laughed with him just yesterday morning, and now couldn't come to terms with the fact that he was found dead the same day.

so really, there is no guarantee..

remote control

[as this posts caused some misunderstandings: i was not especially getting at informal agreements concerning when to meet for leisure activities, but rather the case when people's work attitudes are making it really difficult to get a serious thing done. of course also in private life this sort of behaviour can be quite annoying but it does not usually have such big consequences.]


there is not much which is more annoying and tedious than trying to organise certain people from the distance.. especially if they are of the sorts

a) "i don't know, maybe, i will tell you later" and then they will tell you bloody nothing, you have to run after them, and in the end they will complain about a suboptimal appointment

or

b) "yes, sure, we will do that, i will organise that" and then nothing is organised, noone knows what is going on, and in the end people will not even bother to tell they're not showing up.

don't get me wrong, it's not that i love planning so much or that i'm so pedantic as to wanting to predict every single bit of the future. i also really value spontaneity and everything. but all this avoidance of commitment is not just being relaxed and cool, it is actually wasting other people's time, nerves, and even money.
i wonder what ways of behaviour are open to me in order to react accordingly. talking to these people seems so fruitless, so in my anger i sometimes think that maybe i also should just stand them up?

shortcuts

i wonder when i will ever learn that shortcuts in maths(and everythink like it) are no good...

the unknown other

it seems to be a real sad truth - but slowly i am involuntarily sliding towards the conclusion that - no matter how hard you try - not even when dedicating a good part of yourself to it - you will not be able to really understand someone else. maybe sometimes a bit; if you have a lot of patience and the other one is helping you. but often enough they do not. i wonder if it is because they do not want to be known, because they are avoiding knowing themselves. somehow i can not believe that it should be because they generally do not want to be understood (i guess everybody in some sense has this need to be understood by people in their surroundings - or are there people who honestly do not care?).
so what is to be done with this? i find it annoying that all these attempts to bribe people out of the security of their shell should be so fruitless.. so i guess the only chance i have is to become very very old and never ever move place again.. maybe then i'll get lucky. other ideas?

the importance of team work...

the mask

no particular reason

the point where music links to real life... ;)

borderline

I wonder how it comes that deep emotions put into words so often come close to kitsch.. somehow it's nearly frustrating to notice how not suitable language is to communicate really important things. also wondering if humans will ever manage to dig out a more adapt tool.

Why life's like a puzzle

• if two pieces do not fit, they were not meant to be united.
• if two pieces nearly fit, they still do not really.
  
• if you force two pieces together you will only distort the picture and they will be missing somewhere else.
• each piece has it's own place, but the search for it can be long and difficult. at least it is bound to lead to success if one doesn't give up too early.
  
• everybody feels the emptyness of a missing piece. when it is finally found things fall into place and are cleared up.
• filling in gaps holds some surprises and might change your point of view.
• sometimes you can fit together a lot of pieces because you simply see the connections.
• sometimes you can not find any sense in all the chaos.
• either way, you keep going until you are finished.
  

As real as possible

When once upon a time people pushed the use of pc's in offices very often 'reducing paper' and therefore 'increasing tidyness' and 'better organization' were important selling points - as virtual desktops somehow tend to enforce these things.. but for the price of keeping people structured against their natural habits :)
As now it becomes fashionable to adapt machines more to human needs than vice versa, new interfaces start to make chaos possible again.

Check out the video:

silhouette

long forgotten habits

maybe it was due to my early start this morning, i couldnt really determine it. but the day somehow was strange, time passed very quickly and also i did a lot of things which i had not addressed for weeks or even months. and they all somehow fitted in.
but the most amusing and curious thing happened when i went to the state library to pick up some ordered books. you have to search them by yourself in huge shelves (and it was the first time i ever picked up something there) but somehow i found them immediately, they literally made themselves noticed. one of them was not so big so i decided to keep it out of the big bag for reading on the tube. however, i could not bear to go underground so soon again so i choose to walk to the next station where i had to change the lines anyway. but still, i was curious about that book and opened it up, already walking. and this is when it happened; i switched back into that habit i had as a kid: walking along the streets, navigating nearly without taking my eyes from the pages, my head in another world, reading a book until i got to my destination. the moment of arrival then seems like an awakening, returning from some kind of daydream to reality. and as every sudden awakening it has this strange but pleasant moment of feeling startled - about the place at which you happend to be now.

5:30

and not a bit of sleepiness remaining to drowse away to sleep again.. so i got up. but this left me in the confused state of what to do with so much time before any normal person would start any activities. it nearly felt like a mental block, like 'you are not going to do such a freakish thing' but actually, i did. and it did not feel bad at all, just slightly displaced - in an interesting way.

Happy moment

Everyday I recieve some advertisment on god knows what fancy things and recently this makes me happy for one reason: I rejoyce realizing that I DO NOT NEED all this stuff! :)

Florence

Now finally I have some pictures from the trip :)

one photo..

.. and so many completely different interpretations! I was really surprised how differently people percieve the same image, showed to them without any specific context. The spontaneous reactions ranged from shocked (it looks really violent, borderline) to completely enthusiastic (oh, so sweeet!). Especially these opposites make me wonder how much the reaction of these people tells about themselves, their experiences in life? And at the same time it again strenghtens the point of photography being something very subjective, in this case even independently from the photographer.

liking sincere people

I realised again how much I appreciate sincere people. Ok, admittedly sincerity might be a bit rough to take at first, but I am by now convinced that it saves you a lot of trouble down the line (basically the same thing as the short feedback cycles in agile programming... quite a human and common sense thing, really).
It's like filling things in a black box, not knowing if they go together well with what is already in.. but how should you possibly know if the owner doesn't tell? You will usually only notice when suddenly and out of the lightest blue there comes an explosion for some completely minuscule thing. And as is probably intuitive, an explosion tends to cause much more damage than some bit of incompatibility information given at the start.
For this reason, it take it to be quite useful to address people directly when a problem occurs, because most of the time they are not deliberately being a nuisance. I just wonder if generally people need more encouragement to dare to state that they do not like something.

turned inside out

sometimes I wonder if it is any use for a person's development to always search for the special, unknown, or pretend to be more clever so people would appreciate one.
actually i guess at this point the focus is exactly the wrong way round, as a person then is so fixated on the opinion of others that it is easy to forget how their inside actually looks like. it is as if they became strangers to themselves, which is likely to be the source of a lot of trouble. because how should they be authentic and rest in themselves, when they have forgotten how they are? this is probably quite difficult, but what is more is the scare they are likely to develop against looking at themselves as they really are. supposedly, one would notice one's faults first, as they probably were the first reason why one initially tried to make up with pretending. this might in fact be very hard to accept, but after delusion some positive surprises are likely to be in store, for example when a problem is mastered better than expected. in some sense it is like sounding one's limits, accepting the deficits as well as the talents.
actually, i do still not understand why often it seems to be so difficult to take on the good things about the own personality.. i wonder if it might have to do with responsibility? it seems as if accepting and promoting one's deficiencies would absolve the person in question of the responsibility of doing or at least attempting things in a specific area, so maybe for tricky things self-depreciation is the more comfortable option. conversely, does accepting a talent not imply the duty to train it (which might be hard work) as well as using it for something good (which might even be harder)?

unarming statement

simply lovin' it :D

Religion for dummies?

Further titles in that series also star Satanism for dummies, Jihad for dummies etc..
I wonder how good a book like that is, has anyone once opened one of them? I guess I am not so convinced of the attempt to squeeze religions or cults into a nutshell like that, claiming to make them easily accessible and less complex as they are. But maybe for a start? I don't know.

oh, there is even a link to pictures of scientology for dummies it seems they are about to publish it and want people's opinion on the cover. check it out :)

Reply all...

is probably one of the most stupid functions if in the wrong hands! It really gets me upset when people can not control themselves and spam everybody's (including my) inbox with their absolutely peanut responses! I mean, this is what most groups have a coordinator for.. so only one person has to bother about this stuff...

Maybe I shouldn't be so annoyed but rather feel priviledged to know that one person was not able to read the correct time in an email and therefore made another appointment which in turn will cause him to be late to a rehearsal for about half an hour but actually itdoesntinterestme because icannotevenbethere!!!

surprisingly easy

More and more one hypothesis is growing in my mind, namely that no matter how crazy, prestigious, or ambitious a matter might be it's roots are simple and trivial.
Probably in the beginning there is some informal email, where someone you knows invites you to join a project, like a concert somewhere (in this case Florence). You think to yourself 'alright, sounds cool', accept and start preparing yourself; something that you have done thousands of times before. Of course, on the way you will find out how difficult it can be to coordinate people for rehearsals etc, but still when you arrive there things go as usual. Just maybe that you don't really know when and where you go or where you will stay, but someone will tell you in time so no reason to bother. Quite suddenly you find yourself in a hotel, putting down your things and some strange thought crosses your mind 'actually, how come that I am here in this foreign place for playing a concert? i did everything as always but things somehow changed to a different track'. And only from there you realise that the whole thing was planned that way, that you doing something you would not have thought possible but that you are still the same and actually quite capable of living up to the expectations. From that point, everything continues as before - it's the same ritual every time, everywhere. Tune, adjust yourself, rehearse, relax, tune again, and there we go.
Just around this routine there are millions of details, things that simply happen when one meets new people, and some of them are nearly hilariously funny :) For example the guides of the church in which we played told us: 'no, it's closed for the public now, you are not allowed to enter! but if you want, there is a concert this evening, you can come back then.' When we explained that we actually were the musicians, they first gave us a quite puzzled look but then showed a lot of understanding and let us pass. However, things continued like that when we had a look at the instruments or were depositing our stuff as at first there was noone to show us around :) Also the coordination during the concert was a bit spontaneous, but luckily only the formalities were affected by this. In the end it turned out that exactly one link had been missing: the lady coordinating between San Lorenzo and the external music institutes had not appeared this evening.
In the end all that chaos did not matter: it was a real pleasure to play in this beautiful and huge church, whose dimensions gave great possibilities to experiment with sound whilst still providing a somehow homely atmosphere.
In the evening all this seemed so different already, somehow unreal. But still I could fall asleep with the happy and grateful feeling that on my first solo trip everything had gone well.

my favourite job

sometimes I get lucky - like yesterday: I was so sad already to miss out on my Oktoberfest job due to my projects in Bz, but my moment came and I took the chance to help out in 'my' shop for some 5 hours and as usual it was so much fun! It is just amazing what one can observe from this perspective and what different people come by. In general it is quite a homely atmosphere in the middle of all this chaos, made for a short chat or recommendation which leaves a smile on peoples' faces.
Just the way home is a bit awkward, lined with drunkards and all the mess they produce.. but still all that is covered up by the fact that one somehow belongs to this 'family' of workers behind the scenes of this huge party.

new paths

now after returning home, my life is not exactly the same as before. actually, there are quite some differences in the places and company i am currently enjoying. today i went to the cinema and found myself in the middle of about 200 teachers and roughly 5 kids... it had something about the world being upside down, with this ratio inverted.. and also the director of the movie somehow seemed like a nervous student, speaking in front of all these people. they just had this examinish air :)
another curiosity are my new dining companions. somehow i used to have lunch or dinner with a whole horde of students about my age. now, at least once a week, the age difference to my neighbours is roughly around 50 - 60 years, but they are not the least less entertaining. in fact it is a rather enjoyable pastime to eat with all these 'oldtimers' and they definitely enjoy us at their table. in terms of craziness we are surely equals :)
now as the beginning of my studies is approaching i am curious to see what comes next. somehow i'm quite optimistic, as even from lemons one can prepare amazing drinks!

nothing comes without a price

Today I had the chance to see a teacher's preview of Krabat, a movie about the children's book by Otfried Preußler. I am very impressed by this movie, it is like a fairy tale in the Brother Grimm style, set in Germany around 1600 during the time of the 30 year war. To quote the outline from another review:

It is the middle of the 1600’s and Europe has been decimated by the twin horrors of the Thirty Years War and the arrival of the plague. Krabat, a fourteen year old boy has been orphaned by the plague and now lives his life on the absolute outer margins of society, traveling from village to village with a pair of similarly orphaned friends to beg out a meager existence. Life is grim, verging on hopeless. There is a better than average chance that Krabat will not live out the harsh winter until change comes from an unexpected source: his dreams. Over and over again Krabat dreams of ravens, eleven of them, calling him to join them and become the twelfth. When the ravens deliver a specific location and the promise of food that is all the word Krabat needs: he abandons his friends to the cold, hungry night and sets off to save himself.

What he finds is the Mill. A water powered stone mill lorded over by The Master who asks whether Krabat simply wants to learn the milling trade or if he wants to learn the ‘other things’ as well. Krabat chooses to learn whatever he can and so is initiated into a secret brotherhood of sorcerers. The eleven other apprentices are all learning the arts of black magic under the firm hand of The Master, learning spells for strength, learning to separate soul from body, learning to strike down enemies from a distance and, yes, learning to transform into ravens. It’s heady stuff for a young man, a full belly and the chance to literally become something more, something different, from all of the people in the world outside of the Mill and Krabat throws himself into the work.

Though Krabat progresses quickly, winning the favor of The Master, it is clear all is not well. There is an air of uneasiness to the place. Discipline is hard and violent. And, as the eldest apprentice cautions him, nothing comes without a price. And once that price becomes clear Krabat is entrenched too deeply to be able to simply flee ...

Even knowing the book from childhood, this movie drew me in very much, because it is made in a very skillful way. Music and effects support the plot without ever running it over, and the acting was impressive (it does not happen very often, but I think I am about to find a favorite actor - even a German one ;). In my opinion this movie is really worth watching, however, as it is a German production I do not know when/if it will be released in English as well. Official release in Germany is 9th October 2008.


[i just found this.... and was indeed surprised! so even if the film is not dubbed in another language, it is still a very good book to be read.]

Late Summer

today I was surprised by a visitor in my room: a late butterfly flew into it and sat down on my floor in the sun. there it paused for some moment, displaying its beautiful wings before taking off again..

tintinnabulations

... and then tell me only germans create long, weird words..

imaginary threads

when i was small, my parents used to tell me to put everything in my room on its place in order to keep it tidy. i then imaniged how practical it would be to have some kind of special elastic threads which would connect each item with its place and, after it was used and displaced, would simply snap it back into position. sadly, i never managed to find these threads, but still the image of it serves as a measure of chaos/orientation for my room.
it works like that: i imagine a red thread attached to all the objects and their 'good' positions. as a result i get some structure of criss-crossing which can be classified in different categories.
if they are in a way that i can cross my room without problems, it is not so bad. also the cobweb stage is not too difficult, as it represents some kind of structured mess and still flat, so it can be removed easily. however, once in a while it reaches this kind of multi-dimensional chaos one knows from laser beams in scifi movies. then it becomes a hard task with multiple attempts to reach the other end of the room, find the switch and remove the chaos at once (unfortunately the switch only seems to work in those movies, but then, after it is switched back, the chaos is back as well).

Flieh deinen Schatten nicht

Es war einmal ein Mann, den verstimmte der Anblick seines eigenen Schattens so sehr, der war so unglücklich über seine eigenen Schritte, daß er beschloß, sie hinter sich zu lassen. Er sage sich: Ich laufe ihnen einfach davon.

So stand er auf und lief davon. Aber jedesmal, wenn er seinen Fuß aufsetzte, hatte er wieder einen Schritt getan, und sein Schatten folgte ihm mühelos. Er sagte zu sich: Ich muß schneller laufen. Also lief er schneller und schneller, lief so lange, bis er tot zu Boden sank. Wäre er einfach in den Schatten eines Baumes getreten, so wäre er seinen eigenen Schatten losgeworden, und hätte er sich hingesetzt, so hätte es keine Schritte mehr gegeben. Aber darauf kam er nicht.

Tschuang-tse, in: Sinfonie für einen Seevogel und andere Texte des Tschuang-tse, hrsg. v. Thomas Merton, Patmos Verlag, Düsseldorf 1973, S. 130.

Gefunden auf http://www.zum.de/Faecher/kR/BW/bibellit/texte/t080.htm

Translation will follow soon.. couldn't find the English version so far.. click for other texts and information about the author

about time

"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils."
Louis Hector Berlioz

What makes a man a man? (C. Aznavour)

Recently I realized that holidays are coming through (just before they finish, but better late than never). Good indicators are usually that old 'fun' things revive, like cooking, knitting, building things, decorating.. in short, everything that does not involve computers or out of the house communication. So I feel a bit weird, noticing that these activities stunningly fit to the classical stereotype of a 'housewife' :)
This put me on the question as to which degree the old stereotypes about men and women are still alive/natural/valid? In the end I could not really say what makes someone 'classify' as 'man' or 'woman' (biology excluded). Any ideas?

Kompiuta

Des Woat Kompiuta (Hochdaitsch: Computer, boarisch ausgprocha: Komputa', Neiboarisch: Kompjuuta) is aus'm Englischn und bedeit nix andas ois wia Rechna oda Kalkulierer (von to compute - rechna, berechna, kalkuliern). A gängige Abküazung im Boarisch'n dafüa is' Kompi oder PC.

Ois an Kompiuta bezeichnet ma a Kistl aus Blech oda Blastigg, in dem an Haufa Elektronigg drinsteggt. Zu am Computer g'heat a Buidschiam oda sunst irgand a Ausgabegerät (in da Fachsprach nennt ma des "Peripheriegerät"), wos oahm de Ergebnis vo de Berechnungan, de im Kistl g'macht woan san, ozoang duat. Um de Rechnungen ins Kistl einzumbringa, is a Eingabegerät notwendig. Heitigndogs is des im Regelfoi a Maus und a Tastatua.

Säitsamerweise duat trodz dem Nam heidtzudog kaum meah oahna midt'm Kompi "rechnen".

http://bar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauptseitn

Now I want to know it

On the right hand side you find a poll about a question I was discussing with a lot of people. I want to know your opinion so please vote, or if your opinion doesnt fit put a comment. In particular I would like to know if also on this issue (under which several people in my aquaintances are suffering) the general opinion diverges from the actual behaviour of people. Of course this is only a very limited approach, but I'm not a sociologist so I have to use what comes my way.
Thanks already for your cooperation!

And then?

Tomorrow CERN is planning to power up it's Large Hadron Collider, result of a project started in the 1980s. The objective of this experiment is not a trivial one - in fact, some physicists take it to provide key facts about the creation of the universe.
Now I wonder: what happens if it doesn't? For sure a lot of calculations were done so it is likely that some things can be observed. But in some sense I doubt that we will know the universe's deepest secrets in the near future. And I can't help imagining some irritated faces should the outcome of this experiment be: nothing?

Nachtrag..

it's been a while ago, but still i would like to share some impressions of my trip to the baltic countries with you.
on the map below you see the places we travelled to in these three weeks. i really enjoyed going with the flow and in my curiosity soaking up as many details as possible. however, i came to realise that i was bound to miss out on many things.. maybe some other time i will be able to complete the picture a bit more.



these pictures are a truly random selection from the journey (truly random as i must have exceeded picasa's limit for selected pictures so it dumped more than half of my selection :)
in this place i want to thank everyone for this great journey: Diana, Andrej, Valdemaras, Olga, Andreis, Martins, Marijn, and all their friends and families which i could meet and which were so friendly and caring. I hope to see you before long :)

How to make a top

about truth

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple."
Oscar Wilde

networking

aka continuously connecting with people that are actually no longer there? I was thinking what would happen if suddenly internet would not exist anymore, and maybe also mobile phones.. and I realised that a huge part of my friends would really be offline and lost to me, as nowadays landline numbers or physical addresses are hardly exchanged anymore. I wonder how I would find them again.
on the other hand I wonder what makes people want to build these networks. one reason seems to me the unability to accept that when leaving a place for good you probably won't meet many of these people anymore - except for the few that really became good friends and/or have enough time and money to travel around. maybe it is too hard to face to say these final goodbyes. so we rather delve into the illusion of really being in touch with everyone.
I am not sure we really gain from this, because in some cases it is simply not honest. Also, I guess if one does not expect to see people again one often tends to be more sincere to them (which I generally think is lacking in everyday life) and in this way goodbye moments - if accepted as such - have even the potential to be the most precious in the sense of truth. and they allow to distance oneself from the people that are gone, to open the way to the ones that actually surround us.

But nothing compares to you

I personally think that unneccessarily comparing oneself to others is one of the main sources of people's unhappiness. However, I never manage to make up my mind in wondering if on some occasions it is a necessary tool for motivation to change oneself. It's probably about the reasons we have for comparing ourselves as well as the grounds on which we base our comparisons (i.e. if it is things we can change or not).

Regarding things we can not change I found some nice quotes (as usual I apologize for my rather crude translation, it's not so poetic but I still hope it catches the essence).

The first one is by Abbas Paphnutios

"An welchen Ort du auch hinkommst,
vergleiche dich nicht mit anderen
und du wirst Ruhe finden."

[Wherever place you go to,
do not compare yourself to others
and you will find peace]

The other one is by Charles de Montesquieu

"Wenn man nur glücklich sein wollte, wäre es ja bald getan:
aber man will ja glücklicher als die anderen sein,
und das ist fast immer schwierig,
weil wir die anderen für glücklicher halten,
als sie wirklich sind."

[If one only wanted to be happy, it would be an easy task:
but one always wants to be more happy than others,
and this is quite difficult
as we tend to take the others for happier
than they really are.]

Both I think point out a spectrum of thought which I find thrilling and worth to be tried in real life. Happy experimenting!

Who owns the problem?

Very often it can be observed that people start to argue about something. Usually these arguments start off by some very basic remark of person 1, which by some unknown reason is taken very badly by person 2, who reacts unappropriately, and there we go..
If afterwards person2 is asked why they became so upset, they are likely to say something like: 'oh, this p1, he really irritated me with what he said! so outrageous!'
Of course it is possible that p1 said something wrong or in a wrong tone but: there is nothing p2 could do about it. On the other hand though, the feeling irritated by it actually is not p1's problem: it belongs to p2, who has to accept that this happened and then can start to draw constructive conclusions from that point. So to speak, p2 can change their own role from that of a victim ('it's all p1's problem, they were very rude!') to that of a person accepting the responsibility for their problem ('i got really irritated by this and this is my problem which i have to solve').
I find this approach very useful, as often in an argument or a difficult situation people tend to get stuck in mutual blaming but fail to see that there is the possibility that the other one actually did not at all intend things badly, but happened to push some unknown button on ones own 'panic-list'. Consequently, p2 could continue to ask: why does this irritate me so much? and also: do I really, honestly believe that this person wants to deliberately annoy me?
The first question might challenge p2 to face not so nice experiences they have made in their lives so far which have left a considerable mark on how they tend to look at things (which also implies that there is not one 'right' view of the world but rather that they are all right for one person but possibly complete nonsense for another, but that's another issue). We can not really expect another person to know about these things, which then also leads to the second question. If we can not assume another person knowing about our reasons for being annoyed about a certain way of behaviour, it might well be that these poor souls are completely unaware about the how and why they were causing a nuisance to us. Consequently it might well be that it was not the least their intention to get at us, but rather an unhappy series of events. Considering this, quite often quarrels can be condensed down to what lies beneath it. It might be nothing at all, or some corpses in the basement of p2's mind - but it is actually p2, accepting the ownership of their problem, who has the possibility to sort them out and thus break the circle of the argument.

Speed applying - aka JIT submitting

The new alternative of speed dating:
The trick is to wait with starting your online application just one hour before midnight and then submit 1 minute before, heavvily relying on your internet connection and all sending and receiving servers.
Some more adrenalin can be added by forgetting about some invalid data in some boxes which then have to be searched for in a fever.
Enjoy, but don't hold me responsible if it doesn't work out.

Soundless

Yesterday's ride on the underground left me very impressed and fascinated. Listening to my music, being completely cut out of my environment I witnessed a strange situation.
A quite fragile looking woman entered the coach, carrying a little suitcase, some child-painted cloth bag, and some sheets of paper. She sat down on the bench diagonal to me and started observing the people around. No sooner had we left the station that she bent over to the girl next to me, handing them the papers and pointing on it in a very urgent manner, but the girl didn't want to know anything about it.
At first I was startled as I wondered if she was actually begging; it's not usual here and also her simple cloths did not look ragged. Then she stretched out to me, so I felt I ought to have a look. So I took out my earplugs to ask her what it was all about. The answer surprised me: it was some ununderstandable sound, paired with the same clear body expressions she had showed with the other girl. The woman was deaf-mute. But she was not begging. Contrarily, she was campaigning for subtitles in television programmes! In fact, her sheets displayed statistics on subtitle coverage in various countries, with the US leading way ahead and European countries being all pretty bad.
I felt so much respect for this women: she seemed rather shy in her way of behaving, not at all intrusive, but at the same time she was fighting for being part of society. So she choose to overcome her hesitation and actually do something about the situation by bringing the problem to those people's minds who usually are not even aware about its existence.
In the end, she was more or less successful - all the people that actually gave her a chance to show her case signed her petition.

Repeating stupidity

It is amazing how often one repeats the same mistake despite the high probability that the outcome won't be more sucessful than the last. But on the other hand sometimes - some very few times - it actually is and I guess this is what makes people try again..

Incompatibility of humour

I pondered about this possibility for a long time, and just yesterday another thing proved my hypothesis about how different people percieve what for others is just a harmless way of joking. Tricky, tricky...

Vive la France!

Sadly for quickly writing in French my knowledge is not sufficient. However it is good enough for understanding most of this wonderful page failbook.fr
Enjoy this spoof of the ubiquituos social networ, it is very ironic and brilliant, and you can even find out what LuisXIV thought of Sarkozy's way to behave ;)

Why ask?

I wonder why people teach so much to ask questions, if they then do not respond. So why put yourself out and ask? And then maybe even run after people to force an answer out of them? Somehow I don't feel it's the way to do it..
But then, the ones who never ask, are they not bound to live in their little universe away from the ones around them?

Kalendersprüche

Wenn du ruhig leben willst,
darfst du nicht alles sagen,
was du weißt,
und nicht alles glauben,
was du hörst.
(Mong Dsi, 372-289 v. Chr.)


Wir müssen von Zeit zu Zeit
eine Rast einlegen und warten,
bis unsere Seelen uns
wieder eingeholt haben.
(Indianische Weisheit)

pazienza....

la pazienza è la virtù dei forti


(patience is the virtue of the strong - italian saying)

sadly i'm still failing... ;) i wonder though what they say about people that keep trying..

Nowadays

I'm wondering: am I very old fashioned if I prefer people to meet me first and then look up my profile on networking pages?

relating to people

very often i've observed people noting on someone being too proud and therefore not being able to relate with people in the right way. for sure this happens often enough, but taking oneself for better than some other person is not the only way inhibiting a good relationship between them.
also the opposite, namely feeling too self conscious and less worthy than someone else, has really bad consequences, as obviously also under these conditions a relationship amongst equals is not possible.
in the first case, the proud person often tends to not take the other one seriously and might presume that their acting is only incomprehensible to them as the other person's motives are too stupid and plain as to bother with them. however, as can be seen often enough, this is quite not true.
with self-consciousness, ususally people devalue their own talents and identity, because they prefer to admire someone as often this is easier than focussing on the real reasons why they couldnt gain confidence in themselves. however, very often also this way leads to frustration, as people tend to feel resentful to others that miraculously always fail to see and appreciate their talents.
The solution to the problem of how to found a healthy relationship towards others can be found in a bible quote: >> "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: "Love your neighbor as yourself."<<-Matthew 22:37-40
Even for the non-believers I think this quotation bears acceptable wisdom. The first part brings to mind that people themselves are not the omnipotent power nor the most important entity on earth and therefore have some responsibility for their actions.
The second then states directly how a good relationship can be formed with others: By - first of all - loving your neighbour, accepting them as they are. But - and this to me seems crucial - it also says to love yourself. Neither more nor less than the others. There lies the trick which would resolve both issues mentioned above. On the basis of this balanced appreciation neither the pity of the proud for the stupid, nor the self depreciation of the self-conscious could grow as to threaten equal relationships.

wishful thinking

it would be so nice to travel to a place in europe where germans didnt make all that terrible mess during WW2... but i guess it's impossible, so i will have to get used to the knot in my stomach which is bound to form each time i read through a travel guide.

And there shall be jazz

or at least this is my plan after yesterday's success in improvising with piano and violin together with my cousin. I always wanted to try this but never could work up the confidence (especially not in public) as my very classical music education formed a safe but rather rigid corset to my experiments. And with improvisations... what if in the middle of performing you suddenly loose each other, the harmony, or the idea?!? what a terrifying idea! but - as so often in life, it does take surprisingly little for ending up in entirely new waters. and, consequently, once you end in there you have only two options - to sink or to swim... we opted for the latter and the result was simply fascinating! (probably more so for the two of us performing, as we had never before given it a try... what a mistake! ;) therefore, I have decided to try myself taking some more steps in that direction. if anyone of you has a good recommendation or tip for how to proceed, they would be appreciated very much.

The first steps

for my resocializing at my home are made.. in fact, it seemed to be surprisingly easy as two happy celebrations brought together a lot of people which I hadn't seen in a long time. It was a nice surprise though, that my four years of absence had a noticeable effect on the way the interaction between these people and me. When I left, with most of them (being younger friends of my parents) conversations only consisted in querying me about my where- and whatabouts but never I felt in the position to ask them personal things about themselves. In the end, who was I, being this dwarf that easily could have been their daughter?
Now I feel that my travelling and living abroad and on my own has given me quite some insights and ideas (of course not enough, so I will keep searching) and suddenly it has become possible to dive into the most interesting discussions with these people that have already so much more experience in life. Funnily enough, it even seems possible to tell them something new, so both parts win from the situation. As I was used to be unable to contribute, it is strange but very satisfying to not only draw from but also feed into that well of knowledge ;)

some borrowed wisdom

a train never goes faster than it's last car.

[a truth heard from martins]

lonely on the planet

it is an odd feeling and somehow takes getting used to..
but at the same time pleasurable and interesting as it is the foundation on which new structures start to form.

Ähnlichkeiten...

Manchmal sind die Leut wie ihre Hemden - kleinkariert!
Aber noch schlimmer ists wenn die Hemden sind wie die Leut ...
:)

the wedding

The original reason for my trip to the Baltics was the invitation to attend Diana's and Andrej's wedding in Vilnius. It was a very big and happy celebration with a lot of surprises (including a thunderstorm which nearly washed us away into the river and a lot of tasks to challenge the newlyweds, they however managed everything very bravely! ;)
I felt very touched when witnessing their union in the beautiful church Peter and Paul. Here is a picture of the really 'just married' couple with all their fancy assistants ;)



we celebrated till late in the night (or early in the morning, as you define it) and of course we had a lot of fun, food, dance, and play, meeting friend or just making new ones :)



the morning after brought a few tired faces, however the mood was good and everybody appreaciated to spend a relaxed day in sun and nature.
Concluding, I just really wish all the best for Andrej and Diana and hopefully we will all meet again soon ;)

Estonian joke

logout

or prepare for "but who is this guy? - oh, WHOSE account is THIS?!?! - sorry, I declined your friend offers for you...."

taxi directions for riga

Taxi Directions

Taxi from the airport to our office will cost about 10 Ls (about 15 Euros)
Taxi from bus station to our office will cost about 2.0 Ls (about 3 Euros)

CAUTION: All taxis at the bus station will OVERCHARGE you. Tell them you will NOT pay more than 2.0 Ls for the trip to our office. If they hassle you write down their license number, taxi company name, driver's name and color of taxi. We will file a complaint.

Red colored taxis at the airport are honest. We offer prepaid taxi coupons to/from the airport to our office, hotels and city center. http://www.rigataxi.info/


Print this email and show it to the taxi driver.

like south tyrolians

are latvians and lithuanians when engaging in discussions about their 'dialects' :)

What became of the frog?

Maybe some of you remember the controversies following the opening of the first official exhibition at the Museion of Bolzano. The bone of contemption was a particular artwork, showing a crucified frog. What followed were long and fierce public discussions about respecting religion or feeling insulted, paired with claims to have the thing removed. However, hardly anyone seemed to find their way to actually analyse the work in question and the ideas the artist might have had with it (proving what people tried to reject - that bolzano in fact is a little too provincial to easily digest modern art).
After leaving Bolzano I lost track of the matter, until it reappeared this morning at the breakfast table. A quick search brought the result that (fortunately, in my opinion) the decision was reached to leave the exponat, even though some parties are aiming for more control on exhibitions to come (which I wonder if it will not ruin the purpose of a modern art museum, which should spark off controversies to make people think).
In the course of browsing on this topic I found a post on an interesting blog, dedicated to the issue of democracy and media in south tyrol. If you are interested in these issues (and understand German) I highly recommend you to look through it. Even if I do not agree with everything stated there, it is food for thought as well as refreshingly contrasting to some of the south tyrol media.

finnish humor

Linda Lines, a Finnish ferry company excels with a particular kind of humor.
After the scene is set already by fog, rain, storm, and some waves, only the matching soundtrack is missing. Something relaxing, calming, maybe?
Like - the soundtrack of TITANIC?!?!?!

packing again

after recovering from the wedding by spending some relaxed days in and around vilnius (with typical lithuanian weather) we're getting ready for the next destination of this journey: tallinn. hopefully joining for this part are olga and andrejs which hopefully will bring the eeepc so we can test the gratis wireless theyre supposed to have there ;)
will go now, to prepare for the 9 1/2 hours bus trip which i guess will leave me rather tired. (btw, i noticed some strange thing: there are all this stickers in busses here, with prints like 'united airlines berlin' or 'freistaat bayern'.. i wonder if this is where all the used german vehicles end up.. sometimes it actually nearly feels historical which is great fun!)

arrived

after a wonderful flight Lithuania greeted very nicely with a lot of sun, but luckily less boiling temperatures than Bolzano :) Vilnius was the first place to be visited and I really like the old town, which is so varied and quite spacious, which I found surprising.
On the next day, we travelled to Visaginas and a house in the countryside where I attended the first 'hen night' of my life. Good fun, and also very multicultural :) In the end everybody scraped together some English and also some of my Russian reappeared, which caused amusement.
One thing is also quite interesting: I'm now meeting the families of my friends ;)
ok, wedding preparations need to go on ;)
have a good time

Getting ready to fly

Time was rushing by very quickly, so now I find myself already checking the timetables of the trains to go to the airport. Somehow on my return to it this time Munich showed me a friendly face and when meandering around it yesterday, some sense of 'home' came to me which I did not expect after these few days. (I also realised that I dearly need to brush up on my historical knowledge of my town, on my way from elementary school to university I managed to forget nearly everything..) Now I wish you a nice time, maybe I will write something from Lithuania, maybe not..
best wishes :)

finished!

i'm done with my first paper!! can't believe it but it feels great :)

politeness

i often happen to stumble across or deliberately stepping on these invisible ropes of 'DOs and DON'Ts' and the result of my social clumsiness sometimes are not so pretty.
however, i started to see some of these behavioural rules with less spite as it ocurred to me that they might not be so dishonest after all. Instead, these rituals might convey an archaic, but nevertheless important message, roughly translatable in 'i've seen you, realized that you are there. i don't have anything against you and pay you my due respect'. That would be a statement i could find a compromise with.

Does time fly?

I defenestrated a clock to see if time flies!
-- Lane Smith, quoted in "Who's News", Time for Kids, September 25, 1998

anticipation

lovely feeling that tingling at the hairline -like balancing on way too high an edge..

What does it mean to you?

Being in the middle of the European Championships, the issue of patriotisms surfaced again. It's a part of culture that feels a bit strange to me, and I wonder how you feel about it. Should one be patriotic, and why (or why not)? And what classifies as it?

In this sense, I invite you (even ask you) to share your ideas on the matter with me. To get started, I will attach an extract from a dictionary.

Transmitting file data ...

Committed revision 500.

on my nerves

There seems to be an interesting balance in life: Whenever I realise something a person does really annoys me, it is very likely that I will also find someone else to which I unintentionally do just the same. In some sense this seems like balancing justice, and at the same time like an extremely valuable test bed for human behaviour. Nevertheless, I can't stop this thought unnerving me.

about friendship

Sometimes a few moments are enough to take a person you've never met before into your heart, to be as close as if you had known them forever, and to miss them dearly as soon as they are gone. Rarely joy and pain follow one another so quickly, but the state of bliss about this openness is so precious that it outweighs any sadness.

number crunching

When processing the results of several test runs 2 oddities came to my mind. Both are rather straight forward but still somehow surprised me:

#1 some numbers are more likely than others but the pattern seems still unclear

#2 an excel sheet is just not a database..

if you flee, do it properly

after getting the simple past wrong for long enough, I decided to look it up.. if you flee you at least want to make sure to not leave a bad impression, don't you?

wisdom of the weekend

NEVER assume any office to be empty!

surprise

even rude people can produce beautiful music...

writing papers

Marija says: writing papers is like going to the dentist
it never ends
it is never fun to do it
but once it is over you feel great

(so that would be settled...)

evening out

#3: never thought you could relax so much in a club. but with that kind of music everything just goes with the flow.. nice

most beautiful solitude

only me and my violin on the stage of the huge, empty room of the Haydn auditorium, no people, just sound

summer time

Skirts for men...

very particular gallery of clothing recommended to me by google ads... god knows why...

New experiences

Life is full of surprises, continuously offering chances for new achievments.. On my list there are two of them accomplished in the last 2 days.

#1 My first LAN party! Finally the day of shame arrived and I had to admit that some computer games actually might be fun... (it'll be hell to pay once my brothers read this..)

#2 Arriving for a rehearsal WITHOUT any music sheets! Usually not so dramatic, if you're used to a big orchestra - however, if you play chamber music or solo things become a bit different... also, it does not help if the rehearsal in question is the last one before the concert...
Luckily, a partitura was around for some pieces. For the rest, my lazyness to pull out the sheets when I'm studying finally payed off - I knew some things by heart... So in the end, apart from some increased adrenalin level nothing really happened. Now I'm wondering... a chaotic final rehearsal is said to bring a good concert... hope its true, should be magnificent in the end ;)

Ma(r)x Planck

Wie ihr vielleicht mitbekommen hat, wurde entdeckt, dass unser bekannter Wissenschaftler über die Zeit wohl einen Buchstaben im Vornamen eingebüßt hat.. einen Zeitungsartikel diesbezüglich findet ihr auf spiegel online.

Dort fand ich auch die folgende quantenphysische Erklärung für das Abhandenkommen (oder auch die nur scheinbare Abwesenheit) dieses 'r'. Viel Vergnügen!

ask or not?

There is a saying 'Who asks is a fool for five minutes. Who does not is one forever.'

I wonder if that is true. If you regard only the level of information, the assumption might hold, supposing you could not have drawn it from other sources. However, I think there might be questions that leave you quite unprotected to people's judgment about you and they might get you wrong. So what makes a fool a fool? The fact of not knowing something or the fact that others take them for one?

to lie or to lie? it's just not the same...

Seeing that there were quite some heated discussions about lying in the grass, why/if people were supposed to lie with someone and later lie about it, I decided to dedicate this post to the issue.
As usual dictionary.com is my friend and helper, and for some of you hopefully this will bring order in your troubled mind wondering if your lying was of a proper and/or decent nature.
Enjoy :)

Kryptographie

Anscheinend ist es jetzt Mode geworden, sogar veröffentlichte Texte wüstest zu 'verschlüsseln'. Dieser Eintrag macht mich buchstäblich sprachlos, denn solcher Urwuchs im Sprachengarten spricht der Schreiberin schon fast die Kompetenz zu dessen Pflege ab. In Anbetracht solcher Verwüstung/Verwirrung scheint jede Diskussion über Sprachreformen obsolet, denn bei einem Fehlen jeglicher Logik kann man vom Verständnis von Regeln nur träumen.
Mein Beileid jedem Deutschlehrer ;)

Mit diesem Hintergrund überrascht es auch nicht mehr, dass laut einer Studie Einwanderer oft besser ausgebildet sind, als die hiesigen EU-Bürger. Denn wenn man nicht einmal seine eigene Sprache im Griff hat, wie soll man sich an nur annähernd komplexere Gedankengänge heranwagen?

Connotations

Let me ask you a question: What springs to your mind when someone mentions the term 'Internet'?

Usually the expected connotations would lie in the direction 'fast', 'up to date', 'modern technologies' etc. Maybe someone might point out that it is not that a new invention anymore, but I wonder if anyone would really consider it to be 'old'? Like in 'stone-age' old?

It might happen though if you can tempt yourself to belive in this trenitalia advert:


The writing on this train roughly translates to 'Nowadays tickets are bought over the internet'. Fair point, now this is everyday business. But it has not been for so long, a few years maybe so this left me a bit confused with some questions in my mind.

I wondered about HOW modern Trenitalia possibly is. Usually I don't take them for a very cutting edge company. So I guess they probably were not the pioneers of e-commerce and 'being modern' seemed off the list.
So maybe someone with some sense of irony decided to paint the ad on an old train? Because rust and new technologies go so well together? Somehow this did not entirely convince me either.
After a very long and sleepless night, something else came to my mind: maybe I completely misunderstood Trenitalias concept of making the world a better place! Seeing that they are already working so hard to procure additional holidays for people by making their workplace unavailable this might just be the next step towards that goal.
Suppose this train is simply environmental friendly? Built of fast decomposing metal which takes less than 5 years to show serious signs of trying to get back where it came from: under the earth. Wouldn't that be fabulous? And wait until they start with bio-degradable rails!

About happiness

J'ai décidé d'être heureux, c'est excellent pour la santé. (Voltaire)

Die deutsche Version gefällt mir auch:

Weil es für die Gesundheit zuträglich ist, habe ich beschlossen glücklich zu sein.

:)

Why you should look after your keyboard...

What do you think has more bacteria on it? Your office toilet or your keyboard?

You probably wish for the first but probability is high that its the second.. here is an article which just confirms my personal aversion to sticky keyboards:

Bacteria Wars: Keyboard versus Toilet

London, England - Researchers in London say your computer keyboard may be dirtier than your toilet. A consumer group tested 33 office keyboards for bacteria. They found four of them were potential health hazards. One of those four had five times the germs as one of the office’s toilet seats.

Keyboards pick up germs through sneezing and coughing. Also, workers who eat at their desk leave behind crumbs that become havens for bacteria. Workers not washing their hands after using the bathroom also contribute to the mess on the keyboard.

To keep your keyboard germ free, experts recommend shaking out all the crumbs and dust. Then wipe it off using a slightly damp lint-free cloth. You could also use an alcohol swab.

One microbiologist said that your keyboard is often a reflection of what’s in your nose and in your gut.

original to be found here