Nationality?

While applying online for a job at a university in the UK, I found the following in the drop down menu for the category "nationality":

At first of course I had to laugh because I really have experienced a lot of strange questionnaires while applying for a visa for the USA but I've never seen two choices of nationality for Germans. 

Later on of course I was wondering what on earth these people were thinking when they put this option into the list. They certainly cannot be THAT ignorant that they do not know that this G-country roughly in the middle of Europe has been united more than 20 years ago. So let's assume that whoever created this drop down menu has paid attention to their history lesson - what do you want to imply by that? 

We are one country by choice - people who lived in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) had no freedom of speech, no freedom to travel, they lived in a totalitarian system which they did not want to keep. So do you think that more than 20 years after the reunification, they would want to be labeled to be different Germans than the "other" Germans (are they supposed to be German (West) ???). I don't come from the eastern parts of Germany but if I did I'd find this highly discriminatory. Of course we still have our problems and people in the east still get lower salaries than people in the west and we tease each other about dialects and how we deal with things (but almost all other nations do that too) and certainly there might be a few nutters who want the old system back BUT we are one nation and despite our horrible history there is one thing we can be proud of: Germany was reunited in a non-violent revolution  (of course not counting all the people who have been killed while trying to leave the GDR and those who disappeared ...) and we managed to grow together after all these years of separation.

Customer-friendly ... yeah, right!

Dear company starting with an a (and sharing the name with a river in South America), 

for years I have been a very loyal customer since I never had problems with any of the products I bought. In particular, I liked your offers on mp3 music because I am moving a lot and having to transport lots of CDs is just not very practical for me (since I listen to music when working at the computer, I would make mp3 files out of CDs anyway). 

Until now, there was no problem with buying and downloading mp3 music as long as I was in Germany (with my IP address to prove it). Recently, you decided to change to a new payment system and you promise that the customer can get the product with just one click. That actually works well with books for another (kind) product I have. With the mp3s, however, it does not work for me and instead I get a message that this purchase is only allowed for people residing in Germany. If you do not want to sell your products that is fine with me but what really annoys me is the fact that after 3 e-mails from my side, explaining that I have a German IP address AND a German provider AND am residing in Germany, you're still not believing me and instead tell me that I should use my computer at home since internet cafés and public places sometimes might use international IP addresses and if in doubt ask my provider. Strangely enough, all the tracking programmes I tried to check my IP address confirm that I am actually in Germany (and I know that I am or at least I thought that I was). And since you had no intention to take my problem seriously for the past 4 days and maybe look if something on your side was wrong (which can happen no doubt), I bought my music from a different store. You will not believe it, they never complained that my IP address was not German (and they have the same restrictions as you do).

Way to go!

Time for reflection

Rachelle Van Zanten - My Country (Official Video) from Taylor F. on Vimeo.


This video shows which fantastic places on Earth humanity is about to destroy in search for the last drop of oil (or gas in this case) and the last bit of coal.

Language confusion

At the moment, I use German mostly when talking to my mother on the phone or on days when I stop by the office and have a chat with the office mate. Work is in English so I use it every day particularly now since I have to write papers . That sometimes results in writing English shopping lists for example ... I fear that some of the geological terms I could not even express in German anymore but that's probably not much of a problem since I do not plan my future in Germany. At the same time of course I am staying in Norway which results in having things such as a Norwegian bank account and sometimes having to fill out some Norwegian forms. Unfortunately, I don't really know many Norwegians I could practise with but at least I can read Norwegian books and I would not want to read a translation of Norwegian authors such as Jo Nesbø anymore.
Sometimes when you book a ticket or make a payment you have these drop-down menus where you have to choose the nationality or country and if I am not careful I am looking at the completely wrong end of the alphabet.
If you are French you would look for France (French), Frankreich (German), France (English) Frankrike (Norwegian and probably similar in Danish and Swedish), Francia (Spanish and Italian) ... I do not intend to list all languages but you get the picture - you look for F. France is a nice simple example of course, there are some countries where you have to look for two letters but being German it turns out like that:
Allemagne (French - ok I don't use this too much)
Deutschland (German)
Germany (English)
Tyskland (Norwegian)
The Spanish and Italians keep at least the A and G with Alemania and Germania but why on earth is German in Italian tedesco?
The other day I was looking for Germany in a Norwegian drop-down menu ... I nearly gave up until I realised ... wrong language :D

Things the world doesn't need

Royals!

Disgrace

I am not really closely following German politics lately but THIS man is a disgrace to every honest PhD student going through all the trouble and pain to write their thesis.
Finding all these excuses and playing it down as citing mistakes is one thing but being allowed to keep his post as defensive minister and even still being supported by most Germans is just too much - please Germans wake up! Whenever he opens his mouth he's lying. Show that Germany is still the country of Goethe and Schiller where degrees are not faked.

Where would I be ...

... without facebook. I really would have forgotten this important date without facebook reminding me. And no, I don't really like facebook that much and I usually only log in when I get a message, that's when I saw this important information: "Today is your birthday"

30

There is the new decade. It will only be celebrated after I have managed to hand in the PhD thesis - so I may end up celbrating two birthdays at once (hopefully not!). Since I have been in Germany for a few days and my actual birthday will be a normal work day, my mother insisted to have at least a few candles and a cake. It was a little earlier than the real birthday but I am not superstitious anyway. She also gave me loads of provisions - sweets, cookies, tea so that my big backpack was completely filled with good things to make the last phase of the PhD easier.
Thanks Mom, you are the best!

Goodbye

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;

William Shakespeare (Hamlet, 3/1)

Saying goodbye forever is never easy. Especially when the person has been a constant part of your life the past 30 years. Yet, the last few years were rather difficult and to live much longer than the (almost) 90 years would have brought more suffering with each day.
Rest in peace you will be in my memories.



It's the best one I could find on youtube ... would prefer it without the pictures but the music is what counts!

Vegetarian

Yes, I am a vegetarian for about 18 years and yes that means that I made the decision to not eat meat and fish when I was about 12. My mother accepted it right away and more or less ate vegetarian meals with me at home - of course she was a little worried that I may miss some important nutrients but we had all kinds of books listing vegetables which are good for vegetarians and my mother just cooked more of those. My grandmother didn't really want to accept it but I strictly only ate the side dishes and the salad (no, I don't want the sauce where the duck was baked in...). Going to a restaurant at that time was somewhat harder since traditional German cuisine is mostly with meat or fish. Luckily it was just about the time when more and more people started to become more conscious about what they ate, so most restaurants offered at least two choices of vegetarian meals. During school times, I even got a vegetarian kebab - which is baked feta cheese instead of the meat (that was really good actually). I think that Germany is now a very vegetarian friendly country - most restaurants have a vegetarian section on the menu and you have such a big choice of cheese and other dairy products that you can choose the cheese without the rennet and the yoghurt without the gelatin (seriously what does gelatin do in yoghurt?).
So it was a little bit like going to the middle ages when coming to Norway. There are a few vegetarian restaurants and at most international places (Indian, Italian, Chinese ..) it is usually quite easy to find vegetarian choices. However, when people go out for a meal, they don't ask the ONLY vegetarian (of ~50 people) where she would prefer to eat and I don't blame them (since I am not fanatic about vegetarianism - it is my choice). So I ended up at places where they had not a single dish without any dead animal (not even the salads or soups). Of course then I try to negotiate with the waiters if they could make me something without the meat and they are quite friendly and co-operative but at times you end up with only half cooked vegetables or a strange sauce, etc.... Oh and a real vegetarian doesn't eat fish - that is something which people here have problems to understand - probably because there are many people who say that they are vegetarians but eat fish. Of course that is fine with me but they could say that they are a pescetarian or a semi-vegetarian ... then a real vegetarian wouldn't constantly get served fish. Well I have learned and now will not forget to mention this fact.
The choices in the supermarkets are also not really that great - cheese is usually quite tasteless and so you just go for the one with the most taste (whatever rennet it has). A majority of yoghurts still have gelatin so I stay away from those, there are usually only two producers of milk (both of course not ecological), the only thing you really get is free-range biological eggs. And if you don't go to the really big supermarkets or the Turkish shops (which are quite far away for me so I would need at least half a day only to go shopping there), then the choice of vegetables and fruits is also quite limited.
I am sorry for the somewhat long essay but it still seems to be a certain issue at least here in Norway. Of course you may ask why I am still eating vegetarian if it is so hard here, so here are my reasons:

1. I don't like meat and fish and actually never did eat much as a child. I put this as the very first reason to show that for me it is not a hardship to not eat meat out of principles which, of course, I also have.

2. Ethics. This is mostly about factory farming (mass animal farming) and the treatmeant of animals like transport and slaughtering techniques. Of course something is about the ethics of killing because I also wouldn't eat game out of principal (not because of reason 1).

3. Environmental issues. This is about what people feed to animals in factory farming so that they get fat and what medicaments and hormones they inject. Logically, this also effects animal products and that's why I buy eggs and milk and cheese from organic farming if I have the choice. I could go as far as not buying milk and cheese but I think that would be going too far at the moment. Something like the recent dioxine scandal in Germany will not affect you if you buy organic products.

4. Diseases. Only a minor point but since there have been a few scandals about old meat being repacked and sold, there is a chance you can get some parasites or other nasty stuff ...


Oh yes and I do eat gummy bears - without gelatin of course (imported from Germany, as usual)
During school times we went to visit a factory which produces gelatin. It stank horribly but what really shocked me was the fact that they took leather pieces coming from a shoe factory which already had been coloured. So first they put in chemicals to remove the colour which surely wasn't that harmless either and then they produced the gelatin out of it ... yummy!

Happy New Year!

Yes, I'm a little late but I would also like to take the opportunity to wish everybody a successful and especially healthy year 2011. Actually I had similar thoughts like the ones expressed in the quote below.

"New Year's eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that coome with thte coming of drakness on other nights." ~Hamilton Wright Mabie

For some reason, humans need this repetitive celebration at a random time once set by some of our ancestors (of course not completely random since our planet travels around the sun in approximately that time). But we could as well celebrate the new year in the middle of summer or in March or any other month. Or we could celebrate the beginning of every single day. Then we could also wish each other a happy new day, we could have new day's resolutions which may be more realistic than the plans we have at the beginning of a year and which we will have forgotten by the end of January. Maybe we could live in the moment instead of the past or the future and every day could be special. Maybe we would succeed to seize the day instead of following the monotonous daily routine while forgetting which day of the week and which week of the month we have.
So I wish you 365 happy new days, that most days may be successful and special to you and a lot of strength and support for the demanding, unhappy, tough days we all have to survive as well.
Or expressing it in the words of Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65 BC - 8 BC) commonly known as Horace:
Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.
"Pluck the day, putting as little trust as possible in the future"
which have become even more famous due to being quoted in the " Dead Poet's Society" (an extraordinary and excellent film in my opinion).

So true

Fur

It's getting somewhat colder again and I am as shocked as every year to see so many women with fur coats here in Norway.
Maybe it's just my perception but I think somebody else mentioned it as well.
I never saw that many fur coats in Germany - maybe it's partly because I was not really living in a 'fashionable' neighbourhood?
I'm sure that the few regular readers of this blog wouldn't wear fur so don't watch the video - it almost makes you vomit. For everybody who thinks that it's ok to have a fur coat - go watch it and tell me afterwards that you have a good conscience!
Just one last comment - there are no limits to human cruelty.
And I better don't embed it here ... here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVvqX6maKjA

Moments and Murphy

Almost everybody knows these moments ... once you carry the camera with you for the whole trip and there is not even a nice landscape worth a picture. The next time you don't have it with you and there is the opportunity to get a nice shot.
Three years ago, I bought a digital single lens reflex camera and while I really enjoyed having it, it's just too valuable to take it with me all the time.
Sometimes though I wish, I had a cheap digital camera with me - like that one time around the end of October when I saw a small hedgehog in the middle of Oslo when walking home from work (at 3 am *cough*). It didn't even bother to coil up when I was standing right next to it.
Anyway, since my mobile is starting to die (I can charge it for hours and it still claims that it needs to be recharged) and buying a new battery is not really worth the investment and most people complain that they cannot reach me, I am debating now if I should get myself a mobile with a camera...
But I hate mobiles .... d'oh!

Two minds

You walked away and destroyed the basic trust of a child. You never hurt me physically but the psychological damage follows me for the rest of my life. The ratio says that it is not my fault but yours. Yet it's just impossible to ignore that feeling of being neglected. Why? Sometimes I feel like shouting at you - do you feel guilty at all?
Did you just choose to completely ignore what you've done?
Sometimes I wish you were dead, then maybe the thoughts would stop. Virtually you are not existing anymore anyway. It's impossible to go back so all that is left is to accept that the past cannot be changed and the urge for harmony will never be satisfied. All I wanted was a little bit of your time ....

Isn't it ...

... exciting to live in Boring? 

Thanks to the visitor Boring you might have been bored and klicked on my blog! Now I know that there is a place called Boring in Oregon, USA. 

Presidential elections

Being somewhat close to the States since I spent some wonderful time there I cannot stop myself from following what happens in the last weeks before the elections. What has been a concern in the beginning is more or less becoming a fear: watch the movie and then imagine that there might be a chance that this woman might be the president of a world power with access to nuclear weapons. Experienced or not - if you want to be the president of a country that big you should have a profound knowledge about politics and economy. Hockey rules and moose hunting are not really sufficient. Unfortunately many Americans didn't (do) not feel that way as we could see the last two elections. Btw moose hunting SUCKS!
Please be nice to the world and don't elect a fool again!
Thank you.

Voting machine

This stuff is really fantastic:

For the election in 2004 they had this one:



And this year there is a continuation:




This idea is just fantastic !

A perfect summer

A summer, I will never forget and I could get used to being out in the field - no wrong: I really missed being out and seeing rocks. It was quite tough being out for 10+ hours a day - being in cars, listening to concepts, hiking, hammering, more discussions, moving to another place, sharing rooms with 3 other people, having a queue for the shower, listening to evening talks after dinner (while almost falling asleep)and getting up really early. BUT: the rocks were fantastic, I learned as much as I couldn't have within half a year spending in the office (and this just in 10 days), the scenery was also splendid and I met really nice and interesting people. Picture will be posted gradually (maybe also after my vacation - yeah right I still have 3 weeks of vacation ;))

Another one

Once again I am off for a field trip - this time I will mostly stay in Norway. Hopefully the weather will not be too bad - it doesn't really look that promising.
This summer is so fantastic - maybe I'll have some time for more picture posts when I come back.