My internal monologue has had only non-bloggy things to say of late, which makes it harder to come up with anything meaningful to write here.

We are fighting through making some sort of retirement plans for me, which involves heavy reading, in German, about a topic I hate, personal finance. Don’t get me wrong. Da.ve Ram.sey isn’t all that helpful for us. We don’t have debt and we’re all emergency-funded up, but that’s when it gets messy. Thinking about investing, thinking about inflation and declining public pensions.

I don’t have the worlds most optimistic outlook, so pretty much all scenarios end with me eating cat food under a brdige in my dotage – with no teeth. This is ridiculous, because of course, the State will see to it that I don’t live under a bridge – but the cat food and the teeth or lack thereof are entirely possible.

You see why I’ve been sparing you?

I was supposed to have a mock interview at a private counseling company today, but the person with whom I was supposed to meet was a sexist jac(&§ when we were introduced last week. At the time, I was too shocked to really say anything, but after checking with the UNGS, I told my case worker at the A.A yesterday. She said I didn’t have to go to the appointment if I didn’t want to, and my bank business is pressing, so I am going to wuss out. I was hoping for help formulating true, but well worded answers to some inerview questions. This guy, however, is not the person with whom I want to be discussing “my greatest failure” – i.e. the last job – with.

ok – email and phone call on that. done and done.  Here’s to enjoying my final days of freedom (and to success at the bank!)

Olympic reflections

Just a few random thoughts that did not procede to be full posts

• Germans have very strange taste in Olympic events. We had, at times, 4 different German stations broadcasting events and I still had difficulty finding something I wanted to see. I often watched Swiss broadcasting or ZDFDoku.  I nearly never watched the main coverage on ARD or ZDF – the exception being the daily summaries.
• If you want to convince the world that you are actually not as bad as everyone thinks – a land of a billion oppressed automatons, you might want to cut down a tad on the cast of sychronous thousands for the opening ceremonies. Don’t you watch Kung-fu movies. The masses moving in unison are always the bad guys.
• All those empty seats. What a shame.
• “Hart aber Unfair” is funny.
• How fair is a new world record if the pool is designed differently than the pool in which the last record was swum?
• Everyone who said that China shouldn’t be awarded the games, not because of air pollution or construction problems, but for press and humanitarian reasons was proved right in their predictions. Will this change anything?  Don’t be silly.
• Although there were jokes made about the courtesy course US athletes had to attend, I thought they behaved more graciously than in years past. (Are you listening Mr. Bolt?)

Dumb Questions about Smart Phones: Part Deux

To date, our research would confirm much of what J wrote. No single device can do everything, and as I already have an ipod, a cell phone, and a digital camera, the question is what am I going to use this new device for most? That is probably typing – something you can’t really do well on any of the smart phones.

I set the UNGS to work on the problem last night, and now I will shamelessly take credit for the fruits of his labors. (I fed him while his fingers did the walking and folded his laundrey. That has to count for something!)

• Laptops are too big and too heavy. There is no way I am schlepping our monster back and forth to work.
• The whole point of this is internet, internet, internet. The mini computers don’t have PCMIA slots, but the Acer Aspire One is coming out this Fall with built in 3G card.
• There aren’t Linux drivers for the USB internet sticks yet – which would mean if you wanted to go with the hardware available now, you would have to get the more expensive windows machine.
• Waiting for the 3G computer means saving money by not having to buy the card, and not having a card or stick hanging outside the computer. You could also go with the less expensive operating system.
• Isn’t it cute?! The brown is alright, but I am more of a Saphire girl myself. Here’s the web page with lots o’ info. http://www.acer.com/aspireone/
  
• The UNGS read that vod.afone has better coverage outside of more urban areas, so we would likely go with them – that and he found a 6month contract for data yesterday (I can’t find it today). O.2 offers much slower connections and T.mob.ile supposedly has better coverage in the cities.
• Pretty much all of the contracts forbid VOIP and instant messaging. How is that supposed to work? (see, i promised dumb questions!)

And yes, I read, or at least I read once and have ordered a new book and bought some more Spanish workbooks, so I will be working on my vocabulary as well.

The long and short of it is that I plan to wait, at least until October when the new hardware is supposed to come out and will reconsider my options then. Til then, I can dream of toys.

Dumb Questions about Smart Phones

BSo as of the start of September, I am going back to the land of the Long Commute. This time, the commute will be taking place in an S-bahn without transfers and with minimal walking at either end. The question arrises – how can I make the best use of this time (45-50 minutes each way)? And what new toys should I buy to do this?

I am still going to call this Germany-related because you have to get your phone and web access through a German carrier. I am guessing that the answer here isn’t necessarily the answer that would apply in the States.

This is what’s knocking around in my head at the moment -

Iphone cons

• Not external keyboard!!! If I want to do some heavy duty typing at some point, I would be SOL
• The cheapest plan is 30Eur a month – no Tmobile Hotspot coverage (can you still pay to use one?)
• To use Fring (to use Skype) you have to jailbr.eak the phone. We would probably want to wait until that whole process is a little more stable.
• One choice of carrier

Mini-computer cons

• portability

Blackberry cons

• have heard that there are a lot of pages that don’t load well
• I want to keep my email where it is (online) so I am not sure that their system does anything for me

I have a phone with a contract that works for me, and phone cameras don’t generally take good pictures anyway. So those are lower priority items.

I will update this with more info, but wanted to get it started now.

One more thing that Germans like. . .

getting married a year after the baby’s born. Not getting married. Being wildlly hochnäsig about not getting married. Being a Hochzeitsverweigerer.* Marrying on account of the taxes. Mentioning this in the invitation.

Now don’t get your drawers in a bunch. The SIL didn’t do all of the above, and those things which will be an element of Saturday’s festivities are in likelihood not entirely her fault. I have it on good authority that she wanted to get married, but that my soon-BIL wouldn’t have it and conceded a mere month before the birth of the above mentioned offspring. This simplified naming the child, and as they are both Beamten and one of them is changing jobs, it really was the only way that the whole family could live together (because the State actually ironically still does care if you are married or not).

Na gut. There would be a wedding, but it would not be a big deal. And, in fact, it will be a very small affair, witnesses, siblings, parents and their immediate families. There will be lunch. There will be a walk, and in breaking news, there will now be coffee and cake despite reported protests from the groom that – well, simply put that everyone should more or less piss off after lunch so that they can spend the day together, just the three of them.

They are teachers. This is Ba-Wü. It is August. They have 6 weeks to be alone, just the three of them. The witnesses are driving 2 hours each way with small children to be there. What are they thinking!?!?
And why am I digging so deep into my pockets for a wedding gift, when our presence is at most tolerated?

Because I like my SIL and this is it for her as far as weddings go, so she should have a nice day. And because the coffee solution has been worked out. Ultimately this will take place at the in-laws and potentially without participation of the newlyweds and child so that at least the rest of us can enjoy eachother’s company.

*Die Gedanken sind frei and all that, but do not tell me that not getting married is all about it not being the State’s business when you have a child and have to sign even more papers, declaring fatherhood and accepting paternity and divying up the custody. Or buying a house togehter. It’s not because “it’s just a piece of paper”. It is because someone is opposed to getting married.

Moose Droppings

My life is pretty non-bloggable right now. The job is still impending, but I have pretty much given up on the other interview.

I couldn’t control myself and allowed myself to be sucked into interview training at the end of the month, so now I have two weeks in which to wallow in the depths of my “greatest failure”, my “personal weaknesses” and my “ambitions for the next 5 years”.

re: the last one -”Not getting fired and not feeling like a) emigrating or b) injuring myself at the end of the workday” Yeah, that pretty much sums up my ambitions. Small is beautiful.

Jenn R. has lead me down the evil path of su.rf.the.ch.ann.el.com so quite a bit of my time has been wasted over the past week getting my fill and more of Goss.ip G.irl and Pro.ject Runw.ay. Hopefully, I am actually done with that now and as the weather has improved markedly, I must be off to get my hair cut and pick up some pants from the tailors.

Oh and I need to get wrapping paper for my SIL’s wedding on Saturday, but that is probably unbloggable, too.

Ah, what the hell, it’s anonymous for a reason More later.

ps I actually feel a lot better than when I started this post – THANK YOU!

A new series

Boldy and unabashedly ripped off from “Stuff Catholics Like”, which I am pretty sure was ripped off from “Stuff White People Like”, I will be presenting “Stuff Germans Like”. (If you would like to put together an entry along the same lines on your blog, go for it, just let me know if you’d like it linked here.*)

*all very much tounge in cheek as your readership undoubtedly dwarfs mine

Inspired by observations that I made soeben from the window of my office, I present the first piece of Stuff Germans Like: unicycles.

With infrastructure that makes the daily commute by bicycle less death-defying than in the States, the Germans have sought out a new level of complexity to return the challenge to self-propelled wheeled transport – removing a wheel.

While in other places, the unicycle is transport only fit for a clown (or Patrick Dempsey), they are in relatively widespread use in Germany as evidenced by their sale in Aldi and Lidl and countless Einrad clubs and vereine (Just look at them all!). The interest group does appear to skew to pre-teen girls, though. Given my choice between that and Hannah Montana or HSM, I’ll take unicycle riding any day.

And who can argue when as Einradfreak insists Einradfahren ist die beste Beschäftigung die es gibt. (Riding a unicycle is the best activity there is.) Really, go there and read the rest of the paragraph.