the lament

alright, some elder people have to be allowed to lament for hours about how the state ruined their lives, their dreams, how they were abused giving everything and getting nothing in return. of course the whole society, politicians of all colours and of course their clients and collegues as well did everything to get them to exactly this point.
they must be very disappointed and as they are being victimis of a nation-wide conspiration "nothing can be done about it, as everything is already ruined and will crash in the next moment". maybe they are even right about the last statement. but what really upsets me (apart from the fact that materially they seems to have everything and more than they need - in contrast to millions of other people) is the last sentence bound to be pronounced as the final line of the whole song:
"But actually it's not me, whom I feel so sorry for; it's you!"

It feels like an insult to me, cause I am alive now at this point in time and society and I'm totally not feeling sorry for this fact myself. Actually in a lot of ways I think it's quite the opposite. Of course there are massive problems everywhere, but then people that did never encounter any problems in their lives are very lucky few. So I really see no point in that statement.

Ich will meine Glühbirne!!!!

Zufällig bin ich heute über einige Artikel zum Glühbirnenverbot gestolpert. Sie bestätigen mich nur in meiner Meinung, dass das von der EU geforderte Verbot nicht nur sinnlos in meine Lebensgewohnheiten eingreift, sondern auch noch meine Gesundheit gefährdet (wer hat nicht schon mal eine Glühbirne zerdeppert oder Kopfschmerzen von schlechtem Licht bekommen?). Diese Bevormundung und der dahinterstehende Lobbyismus ärgern mich unglaublich!

Aus diesem Grund habe ich mich entschieden, diese Petition zu unterzeichnen und lade euch alle ein, dies auch zu tun. Es kostet wirklich keine Zeit und ist doch ein Mittel, die eigene Stimme in die Waagschale zu werfen.

Damit ihr das nicht 'blind' macht, hier noch einige Artikel, die euch überzeugen werden:

http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/0,1518,644215,00.html

http://www.br-online.de/das-erste/report-muenchen/report-gluehbirne-klimaschutz-ID1230898145031.xml

http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article4281664/Deutsche-kaempfen-gegen-das-Gluehbirnen-Verbot.html


Eine Website, die sich dem Thema widmet:
http://pro-gluehlampe.de/

suboptimal service

today i recieved a letter - however, it was not FOR me, but returned to me crumpled, with a warning sign of the post office prompting me to add some 2 and something euro in stamps.. at first i was really startled and confused, as i well had put the higher price (which they just changed). however, as i figured, the envelope had been half a centimeter too tall!! ridiculous, as it was much shorter than it could have been, and also the card inside was quite a bit smaller! so there was not much need to send the letter back in the first place (maybe apart from typical german rule-adhering cult) but what upset me most was that they ruined the card inside by just bending and folding it! that was absolutely unnecessary.
i got so angry that i considered dropping by the post office tomorrow morning and blowing a fuse.. but then, i dont have any time to waste for such a thing! so i measured the letter and found out that taping up the side of the envelope was more than sufficient for following the measurements (which made me think the returning even more ridiculous, they are just sooo greedy, squeezing money out of people at every occasion!)...
i just hope they will deliver it now, as if it comes back a second time i definitely will honour them with a visit..

real timewasters

I simply get frustrated everytime when before finally getting down to work I have to search and install thousands of different tools for a functionality I already could use with something else, just to open some random file which is necessary to be able to start... In my world there should be only TEX..

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.

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?

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?

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.