Tribute to my office mates

dedicated to you, and the poor guy who unfortunately could not join us this evening despite our friendly and repeated invitations ;)

thoughts about truth and choices

There are some phrases I came across recently, which keep running through my mind:

"Truth is a daughter of time."
I found this one in an article about corruption in Austria, especially linked to the famous politician Jörg Haider, whom many used to venerate in a saint-like fashion. Now, years after his suicide, people slowly start to look at irregularities they used to brush over, and demystification and criticism slowly start to shape a more realistic image of what has happened. The quoted sentence stresses the fact that often, after the end of an aera, it takes a lot (maybe a generation even) of time for people to let go of sentimental and glorifying pictures, and to face reality.
Why do I think this phrase is remarkable? I find it fascinating, cause it brings a fact to the point about relationships on many levels (personal, couple, family, society): that it takes time, patience and courage, to find truth under the delusions one has build up about something or someone.

"Sometimes it is harder to be kind than clever."
This phrase is from a TED-Talk by Jeff Bezos, the founder of amazon, given at a Princeton graduation ceremony. He uses it as basis to elaborate his statement that decisions in life matter more than the talents one has been given: Cleverness is something one has or not, it is given, so one cannot take credit for it. Kindness, on the other hand, is a decision put into practice, so it tells about the character of a person and shapes their personality.
The reason this statement keeps stunning me? It is the fact that often I am surrounded by very smart people, and could observe that some of them won't miss a chance to stress their superiority over others on the grounds of general cleverness. As far as I'm aware, they do so not neccessarily because they are arrogant snobs, but because they are so used to competing on that level (in the end, school teaches us so..) that they might not even notice how inappropriate this is on certain occasions (especially, if this superiority is already clearly established). I have the feeling that quite some marvellous, admirable, genius people could benefit a lot from accepting the challenge of practising kindness in their conduct.

Blueprint

How to become Parisian in one hour

I DID laugh a lot in this show tonight, and the best thing is: I'm now officially Parisien - so tourists, watch out!!! ;)

Because I'm such a nice person (ehehe), I'll share some of my newly acquired knowledge with you. Summarizing, the basic recipe for achieving parisien-ness seems to be: strip off all your carefully groomed good manners and let the world know it bothers you... I mean, it's just being honest!!
Turns out to be surprisingly hard, even for the supposedly oh-so-rude Germans among us ;) Maybe this sounds a bit simple (it might even be), but then, Parisian habits contrasted with famous American stereotypes, presented by a capable mime really gives an unbelievably funny cocktail, highly appreciated by a very international audience as well as the locals.

self-torture made easy

New communication media provide an entirely new means to torture oneself. What - generations ago - was the daily wait for the postman (limited, cause he passed once a day, at a fixed hour), now is the frantic 30s click on either the mailclient's or social network's refresh button - with the advantage of them being available 24/7.

I'll attempt to summarize the problem as follows: we all like to share things that we consider interesting or important. If they are personal details about our own life, of course they are very relevant to us (and, we might conclude from our limited poit of view, also to aaaaall our 'friends' on whatever lists they might be). Of course, they are all just waiting to share their viewpoints on these matters!

Now the great delusion hits: the number of people interested in our little personal stories is inversely proportional to the number of details we share. In other terms: hardly ANYONE out there is going to be interested in ALL the things we want to share with them. And to make it worse: the few that are might not even be the people we WANT to be interested in our lives (like stalkers, ex-partners, secret admirors, employers, parents-in-law, etc).

Ensuring the desired dose of misery, one might end up being bothered by the good advices of people one finds annoying, and observing the people one cares for displaying a lot of interest in the lives of - OTHERS!


Have a nice evening!


Ps: Why did I write this? Is it not contradictory in itself? I don't think so, cause the reason is: Just for fun, and for the few who might actually enjoy reading it... if you are, I wrote it for entertaining YOU ;)

Pps: Thanks to the people who inspired me - there are only very very few, but they are real!

Internet Amnesia

A very common illness severely impacting productivity when fulfilling tasks based on services available on the Internet.

Symptoms:
The patient chronically starts up the computer and opens a browser window to accomplish a certain task. By doing so, they get flooded by an unmanageable amount of stimulating information, causing them to completely forget their original aim. This behaviour is especially to be observed in the presence of tabbed browsing habits combined with session restore settings. Internet Amnesia can be very brief, leaving the patient capable to finish their tasks. However, in extreme cases, it is of longer duration and inflicting a trance-like state on the patient. This trance can be observed to last at least until the computer has been shut down. In some instances, the patient then suddenly becomes conscious of their aim again.

Consequences:
A huge loss in productivity, electricity, and an increase in absentmindedness have been observed.

Le Bain de Soleil

Top-down-approach

I've been wanting to post this for ages, but then I did choose not to. Why? Maybe at first the reason is not entirely obvious - some random stairs in some random forest - why should or shouldn't one bother to publish the pictures? Well, the it is kinda straightforward (once known) and a little bit egoistic:

I did not want to scare off my visitors!

Because what you see on these pictures is the only way to get from my room to the train and vice versa, whenever there is no bus (which is on weekdays after 9pm, on sundays, holidays, or when there is yet another strike)...which makes it a close to daily (or nightly, for that matter) experience for people living or working on the campus.

So chances are that one is taking these wonderful stairs at least once when coming to visit (and, no, I was not joking, nor encouraging eco-tourism when I asked if you had a big rucksack ;).

Funnily enough, no-one really bothers informing you about this 'fact' when you prepare your stay at the university, so the first ascension is literally a lot of 'fun', especially if you bring a lot of luggage.. I have seen quite a few people dragging huge suitcases up and down, so the way is lined with the odd cracked stair, or some suitcase handles.

I suppose, so far I do not sound too positive about the whole thing.. but I'd like to stress that - given enough time till the next train departure, and maybe no rain - I quite like the walk DOWN there (on which I had enough breath to hold the camera and take non-shaky pictures..) as there are a lot of birds singing, one can meet echses and hedgehogs, and the wind blowing through the trees is really pleasantly refreshing. So in fact, I appreciate the peacefulness of this walk and prefer it a lot over the bus!

The only part which I don't like is this last bit, and if you look closely, you can see that there are no stairs.. just gaps in the concrete. At first one would think ' how pleasant', but with casual shoes things can get tricky: the whole thing is quite steep and extremely slippery even without rain.. (and maybe you see the 'solution' to the problem on the right side of the pic: they added a handrail!!!) apart from that, the irregularity of the steps and gaps really need some practice and a good eye.
So equipment in this case matters - especially if you have less than 10 minutes to catch your train...

The yearly plant picture

this time from france,
dedicated to martins ;)

Tourist Weekend

This saturday I finally managed to do one thing being on my list for ages: visiting the famous (and freshly renewed!!) castle of Versailles. On arriving, I was instantly impressed by the size of the castle, but what really amazed me was the fact that on the tourist map I could hardly find it, as its garden is ginormous in comparison. If you don't know what I mean, check it out on google maps!
For entering the castle there is of course a very long queue, which takes up to hours to finish. To save yourself all that time, here is the thing to do: check in your wallet (or wherever you keep it) if you don't aready have a free ticket in the form of your ID card - proving that you're a European citizen and under 26! If yes, you can directly enter the castle (yes, without a ticket)!