...And there is seriously nothing interesting to tell. The truth is, there is always less and less to tell in these updates, and I'm getting tired of them. I will probably not buy a digital camera to get pictures, unless there is a good deal somewhere.
If there isn't an update here in a long time it means I either got bored or lost iinternet access. I know it looks really GHETTO right now, but there are links on the left so you can read whatever date you want, and my email's there too.
I wanted to apologize to the readers of my previous entries if they were somewhat exteremely negative or offensive. I just wanted to let out some steam, so I did it. Maybe I regret writing some things down, but the fact remains that I don't like it here very much at all.
Things have improved, though. I took the username/password of the public access internet computer at work, and applied them to the PC I do my work on. Voila! Instant Internet access. And I finally activated MS-OfficeXP, which only had about 10 days left or so. So I've been catching up on my surfing now ;-) Unfortunately, the Network Admin has locked out lots of stuff, namely Kazaa, Emule/Edonkey, mIRC, FTP, etc. It's terrible not having access to stuff, but I got around some things. The FTP issue has been solved by using an HTTP FTP service, which is luckily free.
I am still kind of stretching out my work that I got from the first day! I am adding new stuff to the help file and making sure everything matches up when I compare it to the WordDoc help. So far they are almost exactly the same, except I gotta add some more stuff to the Word Doc. I even wrote a list up of ideas of things to do, and I think the stuff I came up with is good for taking up time. But I will concentrate on getting everything done that's necessary first, and then later on add the extra things if they still haven't found new work for me to do.
As far as non-work stuff goes, my mom and my youngest brother came on saturday and Tommy's been bothering me since he first saw me. It's just like old times, except I'm in no mood for games these days. So I played a little game and locked him in my room. That scared him straight and now he leaves me alone. But he'll be back to torment me again soon, I know it. Soon my dad and my sister will join them and then 5 of us will be here in Germany for a while, at least in July.
I've been able to track down some things that I thought were not in Germany. These include peanut butter, Pringles, Subway (which I mentioned earlier), and water. They are a little hard to track down but they are there. My sister also sent me some tasty toffee treats, that'll last me for a week or so. Thanks for that btw, sissy. The water was actually there the whole time, it's still called "Mineral Water", except the label says "without carbon dioxide". Then it tastes like really good spring water! So now I take 2 water bottles to work every day, and that's GTHBA. So it's not all that bad anymore in the drink aspect of things.
I think I am starting to accept my doom here more than I used to. After reading some emails, I realized my having a job at all makes me fortunate. So I will make the best of the situation and try to find more work to do around here, once I stop being such a pansy.
It has been really hot the last few weeks without hardly any rain at all. I come home sweating like crazy every day. Here is where a shower would come in handy, but no, grandparents only have a bathtub. So it's a little awkward. When I was at my Aunt and Uncle's, I showered twice every day!
Today I met a guy at work who is part american and part german. I have seen him around the office a lot but never actually talked to him. I was shocked when he suddenly spoke perfect English to me with no trace of German accent at all! But he speaks really good American AND German, where I speak good Canadian and passable German. He is from Pennsylvania, but I can't remember his name. :-P There is a guy here from Australia as well, we get along pretty good, and speak English all the time. His name's Kristian. He's a pretty quiet type guy, and I can't understand him sometimes, but it's all cool. I need to keep speaking English or I'll come back to Canada with a screwed up accent.
I enjoy surfing the net and I hope that they won't take it away from me. It's almost like old times of summers gone by, accept for the fact that I can't access mass-downloading software networks. Oh well, I'll be sure to catch up on my DivX, Isos and mp3s when I get back.
Well June is almost over and it seems I've lived through almost 2 months. It's kind of crazy if you think about it. I hope the next two months will prove interesting rather than boring, but at least with Internet I'll be able to live through it no matter how it turns out.
-joramee out
Tuesday, June 24, 2003
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
Random musings of the past month or so...
I've enjoyed typing out these long-winded entries as much as receiving feedback from people. It's nice to know that there are people out there that are interested in what you're doing all the time, even though it's not that exciting. The fact is, I'm a pretty dull boring person, so there's not really that much that goes on in my life. But when there is something, even something small, I must write about it. That's why I like to write these updates.
I know it would be cool if you could reply to the messages inside the actual webpage, but I just don't know my way around those Bulletin Board programs enough to do it. Maybe if I'm really super bored, I will actually learn one of those programs and you might see a surprise one day, but as for now, this page will stay in a simple table format.
I know all this stuff is self-involved, and pretty lame as well, and it might seem I'm thinking highly of myself by assuming somebody actually cares about my entries by posting it on the Internet, but please understand: I am in a land of mineral water here folks. I'm dying slowly every day at my boring job, and I need some kind of an outlet!
I also like the idea that I will be able to read these updates/entries myself after the summer is done, and see my progression. The other thing is that maybe some of you could tell others that I forgot to include in my emails, or people who's email I didn't know. I hope y'all realize if I had my computer and the Internet at home I would never in a million years be doing this btw!
Well this past week was something else, that's for sure. Once again I was reunited with the marvelous inventions of TV and computer (in a games aspect). Video games were played, shows were watched, and good times were had. But that's not all I did... I even did some things I have never done before, ever. Like go on a bike tour in the Rems Valley. Or go to a Biergarten. Or go to a German movie theater. or ride on the backseat of a motorbike to Heidelberg. Or eat pizza with hot peppers on it.
Yes it was definetely good times at my Uncle's place last week. I am still staying for tonight, but then it's off back to the grandparents place, where the boredom never ends. My Aunt and Uncle made a big effort to get me out away from the computer though, and they certainly did a pretty good job of it. I'm glad that I got out, but of course sitting on a bike seat for a long time causes major bruising issues.
I already mentioned last weekend a little bit, but I will expand a little here. We also did some mini-golf on Monday, but that is nothing too interesting. It was really hot the last week, so it was hard to sleep sometimes. The Germans have these weird roll-shutters on all their windows, so in the morning you can hear them rolling up on all the houses. They even have them over glass doors that lead to balconies. Anyway, that day I also had my first water-based popcicle in Germany, except it was nowhere near Rainbow Rocket quality. It was pretty small too, and looked like a hand holding up a finger. I'm not sure which finger... I love chocolate, but I'm not a fan of chocolate popcicles. It's a weird thing really, but that's just it. So at least I can cross one of those missed snacks off the list!
Then on Tuesday I think it was, I sat on a motorcycle for the first time. It was not so bad, but I hung on for dear life 'cause I was a little scared of going down. We went to a nice park where there is a pond beside a mini-palace-thingy. It was pretty cool, and there were ducks there that were fighting each other. Or playing. I couldn't tell. My Aunt and Uncle both ride Suzuki Intruders, the only difference is one has 1400CC and the other has 800CC. It's not bad riding on the back, except I don't really feel comfortable sitting so close to someone stradling their, um, back... but I learned to ignore that little issue after a while. And it gets REALLY uncomfortable after about an hour or so.
Then nothing much happened that week, because we all went to work that week. I tried some Italian pizza, and ordered pepperoni on it. But pepperoni is something else here in Germany, so what I got was hot green peppers (like jalapenos practically) all over the pizza, and it was pretty nasty. They weren't even cut up, they were whole! But I'll remember that for next time. I also want to try a DÖNER some time as well, they are kind of like hamburgers. They look good as well. The only american fast food places they have here are McDonalds and Burger King, and I haven't gone to either yet. It should be interesting... apparently everthing there is 2 or 3 times more expensive than in Canada, but tastes WORSE! We'll see. Also there is apparently a Subway in Stuttgart, I gotta check that out sometime.
Then Saturday came the big bike ride to Heidelberg. I can't remember if it's BERG or BURG, oh well. The difference is 'hill' or 'castle', but it could be both, since the city is in a valley with hills around it, and there are also lots of castles! The ride there was pretty scenic, we went through some nice areas. Another guy came with us, some Czech guy that my Uncle knows. When we got close to Heidelberg, it began to rain, so we stood underneath a bridge until it stopped. But because of the stop, we could only stay in Heidelberg for a little while. There were lots of American and Japanese tourists there, and one little American kid told its mom "I want to go on the canoes!", but they were actually professional rowboats. I thought that was funny..
Heidelberg is a city that's divided by the Neckar River, and both sides have hills on them, so the houses are all on the hills. One side has rich people's villas on it, the other side has the regular houses and tourist places, as well as a cool castle on the hill. I should have picked up some brochures or postcards, but I forgot. Then on the way back we took the Autobahn, and that's where I nearly went insane. My ass started to hurt so much I just started talking crazy things to myself. Nobody could hear me, not even myself, but it was fun. I was so thankful to get off that bike, and it seemed forever that we were on the Autobahn. And we drove so slow too... at least it seemed that way, since everybody passed us. But my uncle told me afterwards that we went 120kph nearly the whole time, in the slow lane! Crazy.
So during the times I was at home I mostly played computer and watched TV. As I reported earlier, Pascal doesn't know anything about computers, he just wants to play games. He's really into Magic: The Gathering cards, he says it's really popular. I don't know if it's so big anymore in Canada, but I'm out of the loop as far as those things go. He's also into DragonballZ, so he has a whole row of German translated comics in a shelf, about 30 of them, like fat graphic novel types. It was nice playing the emulators and roms with no slowdowns, as his compy is slightly faster than mine. I played Super Metroid for him and showed him what it was like in the good old days. He seemed kinda interested in it, or maybe he was just humouring me, but I didn't care. He also has a wireless controller, and I enjoyed using it. I think I will get my own once I get back, it's nice not having the wire limiting you all the time.
As for TV, my uncle has satellite with a lot of locked out channels. In all I'd say about 150/500 channels work, and some of them are just doubles. There are some english stations too, like NBC-Europe, and CNN. I usually watched those because I need the English connection really badly. I hate watching movies in german though, the voice actors do a decent job but their voices all sound the same somehow. Actors have disctinct voices that set them appart, and once they're dubbed over it ruins the movie or show. Yep, no subtitles here except for some rare examples, such as the Ali G show, which was funny. Also the channel surfing was weird, you have to press down to go up a channel, and up to go down a channel. That was odd at first, but it made sense somehow because the list starts with channel 1 on the top and goes down to higher channels, like an ascending sorted list.
Another cool thing was the racing channel. You could actually select different cameras and stuff during a Formula 1 race, which was pretty sweet. We watched Michael Schumacher win a race in Montreal. Here in Germany he is really popular, he's like a big celebrity, and they call him 'Schumi'. Oh yeah, and sensorship is really loose here too. They are allowed to show breasts and even full frontal nudity (quick flashes). Some of the late night callgirl commercials were a little more, er, risque than the ones in Canada, that's for sure. Not that I watch those... all the time. Also it's possible to catch naked breasts even on big ad posters at train stations. Rated R movies can be seen at 16 years already, instead of 18. And I saw an Eminem music video, and no swearing was bleeped out. The Germans use foul language really losely, it's not that offensive to them. They never say 'poo poo' or 'fesces' or 'crap', they say 'shit'. It's simply like that... I was a little taken aback at first, especially by words like that being used in a professional working environment, but I'm getting used to it. Not that I will use those words myself, but I understand now the cultural difference gives them some leeway.
And that was pretty much the whole week. Lots of things happened, and once again I am sorry I don't have a digital camera or something, that's really hurting right now that the only memories I have will be written down. I will remember for next time I guess... or maybe I should just buy a camera. I have the money for it... well we'll see. These wordy updates would certainly be a whole lot more interesting if there was visuals included!
I will try to update every week or so. If by some kind of miracle I actually get real work to do, the updates will be fewer and far between, but I have no fear of that at the present time.
Ciao,
JoWak
I know it would be cool if you could reply to the messages inside the actual webpage, but I just don't know my way around those Bulletin Board programs enough to do it. Maybe if I'm really super bored, I will actually learn one of those programs and you might see a surprise one day, but as for now, this page will stay in a simple table format.
I know all this stuff is self-involved, and pretty lame as well, and it might seem I'm thinking highly of myself by assuming somebody actually cares about my entries by posting it on the Internet, but please understand: I am in a land of mineral water here folks. I'm dying slowly every day at my boring job, and I need some kind of an outlet!
I also like the idea that I will be able to read these updates/entries myself after the summer is done, and see my progression. The other thing is that maybe some of you could tell others that I forgot to include in my emails, or people who's email I didn't know. I hope y'all realize if I had my computer and the Internet at home I would never in a million years be doing this btw!
Well this past week was something else, that's for sure. Once again I was reunited with the marvelous inventions of TV and computer (in a games aspect). Video games were played, shows were watched, and good times were had. But that's not all I did... I even did some things I have never done before, ever. Like go on a bike tour in the Rems Valley. Or go to a Biergarten. Or go to a German movie theater. or ride on the backseat of a motorbike to Heidelberg. Or eat pizza with hot peppers on it.
Yes it was definetely good times at my Uncle's place last week. I am still staying for tonight, but then it's off back to the grandparents place, where the boredom never ends. My Aunt and Uncle made a big effort to get me out away from the computer though, and they certainly did a pretty good job of it. I'm glad that I got out, but of course sitting on a bike seat for a long time causes major bruising issues.
I already mentioned last weekend a little bit, but I will expand a little here. We also did some mini-golf on Monday, but that is nothing too interesting. It was really hot the last week, so it was hard to sleep sometimes. The Germans have these weird roll-shutters on all their windows, so in the morning you can hear them rolling up on all the houses. They even have them over glass doors that lead to balconies. Anyway, that day I also had my first water-based popcicle in Germany, except it was nowhere near Rainbow Rocket quality. It was pretty small too, and looked like a hand holding up a finger. I'm not sure which finger... I love chocolate, but I'm not a fan of chocolate popcicles. It's a weird thing really, but that's just it. So at least I can cross one of those missed snacks off the list!
Then on Tuesday I think it was, I sat on a motorcycle for the first time. It was not so bad, but I hung on for dear life 'cause I was a little scared of going down. We went to a nice park where there is a pond beside a mini-palace-thingy. It was pretty cool, and there were ducks there that were fighting each other. Or playing. I couldn't tell. My Aunt and Uncle both ride Suzuki Intruders, the only difference is one has 1400CC and the other has 800CC. It's not bad riding on the back, except I don't really feel comfortable sitting so close to someone stradling their, um, back... but I learned to ignore that little issue after a while. And it gets REALLY uncomfortable after about an hour or so.
Then nothing much happened that week, because we all went to work that week. I tried some Italian pizza, and ordered pepperoni on it. But pepperoni is something else here in Germany, so what I got was hot green peppers (like jalapenos practically) all over the pizza, and it was pretty nasty. They weren't even cut up, they were whole! But I'll remember that for next time. I also want to try a DÖNER some time as well, they are kind of like hamburgers. They look good as well. The only american fast food places they have here are McDonalds and Burger King, and I haven't gone to either yet. It should be interesting... apparently everthing there is 2 or 3 times more expensive than in Canada, but tastes WORSE! We'll see. Also there is apparently a Subway in Stuttgart, I gotta check that out sometime.
Then Saturday came the big bike ride to Heidelberg. I can't remember if it's BERG or BURG, oh well. The difference is 'hill' or 'castle', but it could be both, since the city is in a valley with hills around it, and there are also lots of castles! The ride there was pretty scenic, we went through some nice areas. Another guy came with us, some Czech guy that my Uncle knows. When we got close to Heidelberg, it began to rain, so we stood underneath a bridge until it stopped. But because of the stop, we could only stay in Heidelberg for a little while. There were lots of American and Japanese tourists there, and one little American kid told its mom "I want to go on the canoes!", but they were actually professional rowboats. I thought that was funny..
Heidelberg is a city that's divided by the Neckar River, and both sides have hills on them, so the houses are all on the hills. One side has rich people's villas on it, the other side has the regular houses and tourist places, as well as a cool castle on the hill. I should have picked up some brochures or postcards, but I forgot. Then on the way back we took the Autobahn, and that's where I nearly went insane. My ass started to hurt so much I just started talking crazy things to myself. Nobody could hear me, not even myself, but it was fun. I was so thankful to get off that bike, and it seemed forever that we were on the Autobahn. And we drove so slow too... at least it seemed that way, since everybody passed us. But my uncle told me afterwards that we went 120kph nearly the whole time, in the slow lane! Crazy.
So during the times I was at home I mostly played computer and watched TV. As I reported earlier, Pascal doesn't know anything about computers, he just wants to play games. He's really into Magic: The Gathering cards, he says it's really popular. I don't know if it's so big anymore in Canada, but I'm out of the loop as far as those things go. He's also into DragonballZ, so he has a whole row of German translated comics in a shelf, about 30 of them, like fat graphic novel types. It was nice playing the emulators and roms with no slowdowns, as his compy is slightly faster than mine. I played Super Metroid for him and showed him what it was like in the good old days. He seemed kinda interested in it, or maybe he was just humouring me, but I didn't care. He also has a wireless controller, and I enjoyed using it. I think I will get my own once I get back, it's nice not having the wire limiting you all the time.
As for TV, my uncle has satellite with a lot of locked out channels. In all I'd say about 150/500 channels work, and some of them are just doubles. There are some english stations too, like NBC-Europe, and CNN. I usually watched those because I need the English connection really badly. I hate watching movies in german though, the voice actors do a decent job but their voices all sound the same somehow. Actors have disctinct voices that set them appart, and once they're dubbed over it ruins the movie or show. Yep, no subtitles here except for some rare examples, such as the Ali G show, which was funny. Also the channel surfing was weird, you have to press down to go up a channel, and up to go down a channel. That was odd at first, but it made sense somehow because the list starts with channel 1 on the top and goes down to higher channels, like an ascending sorted list.
Another cool thing was the racing channel. You could actually select different cameras and stuff during a Formula 1 race, which was pretty sweet. We watched Michael Schumacher win a race in Montreal. Here in Germany he is really popular, he's like a big celebrity, and they call him 'Schumi'. Oh yeah, and sensorship is really loose here too. They are allowed to show breasts and even full frontal nudity (quick flashes). Some of the late night callgirl commercials were a little more, er, risque than the ones in Canada, that's for sure. Not that I watch those... all the time. Also it's possible to catch naked breasts even on big ad posters at train stations. Rated R movies can be seen at 16 years already, instead of 18. And I saw an Eminem music video, and no swearing was bleeped out. The Germans use foul language really losely, it's not that offensive to them. They never say 'poo poo' or 'fesces' or 'crap', they say 'shit'. It's simply like that... I was a little taken aback at first, especially by words like that being used in a professional working environment, but I'm getting used to it. Not that I will use those words myself, but I understand now the cultural difference gives them some leeway.
And that was pretty much the whole week. Lots of things happened, and once again I am sorry I don't have a digital camera or something, that's really hurting right now that the only memories I have will be written down. I will remember for next time I guess... or maybe I should just buy a camera. I have the money for it... well we'll see. These wordy updates would certainly be a whole lot more interesting if there was visuals included!
I will try to update every week or so. If by some kind of miracle I actually get real work to do, the updates will be fewer and far between, but I have no fear of that at the present time.
Ciao,
JoWak
Saturday, June 14, 2003
So many holidays in June!
Next week will be the second holiday in June, and May had one in the last week. That's crazy in my opinion, the weeks are just so short these days. But after that there's nothing in July and August, so full 5 week days are ahead of me. I've decided that even though my work sucks, at least I don't have to think while I'm doing it. I'm not big on thinking, so that's a plus point. I will try to see the good side of things from now on, and simply accept my fate of office lackey.
I went motorbiking on Tuesday with my Aunt and Uncle, they have 2 Suzuki Intruders. I think that's what they're called. Or Invaders. Whatever. It was pretty cool as I haven't sat on a motorcycle before. It's like a bicycle but faster, which is pretty much logical. I kept bumping helmets because I was too afraid to fall down. It was nice being cooled off on such a hot day, though. It was super hot this week hopefully it'll cool down soon.
I thought I might make some more observations regarding differences in Germany.
As some of you know already, cars drive pretty fast over here, even though curves and hills outnumber straightaways 100 to 1! Cars speed like crazy, especially in areas where there are no speed limits, like the Autobahn. Cars go 200kph easy on there, even cars that aren't sports cars.
Also, Stop signs are a joke here. They are so rare, and when you do see them they are just there to serve as 4-way stops when the traffic lights malfuncion, so you basically drive through a stop sign when the light is green. It's a weird feeling. The yield signs are in places where there should be stop signs, and places that should have yield signs, have no signs at all! Well some have these signs that are circles with a cross and an arrow pointing right. That means the car on your right goes first. But what if there are four people in the intersection at the same time? Also all the cars are standards, but I think I mentioned that already, and they mostly don't have air conditioning in them.
And some intersections are super complex, every single lane has their own light, so left, straight, right for four directions, that's 12 lights. So you'll never see someone trying to turn left on a green sitting in the middle of the intersection waiting for an opening. The pedestrian signals are a red dude standing and a green dude walking. Makes sense. Except the red dude just appears and stays solid, there's no flashing before hand. And of course no turning right on a red signal, that's obvious. The actual lights are on your side of the road too instead of on the other side, so you gotta duck down and look up to see your light change. Some even change backwards, so they go from red to amber to green, like in a race.
Curbs are made out of small 2-foot sections instead of a long continuous band of concrete. And there are lots of cobblestone driveways and parking lots, not so much ashphalt except on driving roads. The city center in Stuttgart is almost impossible to get through with a car. There is a big street called the "König Strasse" which is there for pedestrians only, so basically imagine downtown Toronto (Yonge Street for example), only instead of cars and people it's only people!
All the houses look the same too, they have one flat colour for the outer wall, and a pretty steep roof covered with rounded brick tiles. So no aluminum panelling or brick layers or sandy roof shingles over here. Windows are funny, you can either open them sideways like a door, or if you turn the handle 90 degrees you can pull them open so they tip towards the inside. I haven't seen one sliding window yet, except on cars. Also all houses have intercoms on them and lots have gates in front, locks all over the place. The Germans are paranoid somebody will get in, or maybe they just like it that way. You don't see lots of tall 13+ story appartments either, instead there's just lots of houses bunched up really tight. They cram them full of people, and the roofs usually don't have an attic so you can see the tip of the roof from the inside if you're on the top floor. Toilets don't have handles to pull down, instead they have buttons built into them, that you depress to start the flushing process. The button is sometimes about as big as my hand, but others are just little buttons. Either way, they are built into the toilet. Refrigerators and stoves are really small, they are even built into the kitchen decor sometimes to make it look like they're not there. For example, you open a random cupboard and whoa! You just opened the fridge door. Or hey! you opened up the stove vent!
I might have mentioned the lax cigarette and alcohol laws here, so you can skip this paragraph if you already know. But it's unbefrickenleavable to tell you the truth. They have cigarette vending machines on every corner. Each pack is 3€, which is about 5$ Canadian I think. So any little kid could buy them, and they are also in the cash checkout line in the grocery stores. Alcohol you can have when you're 16. It's all about the beer here of course, you can even drink it in public areas, like in the train station or bus terminal or anywhere you want. So lots of people drink and smoke here.
The stores that have grocery items also have everything else in them, including motor oil. So imagine Canadian Tire, Chapters, Zehrs, Sears, the LCBO, the Beer Store, and Future Shop all mixed into one. And they call all cereals Corn Flakes! So the original Corn Flakes are called 'Die Originalen'. Most people eat lunch and supper backwards, so for lunch they'll have a huge warm meal while for supper it's just bread with cold cuts and stuff. It screwed up my whole metabolism process, now I'm getting fat because of it. I'm 80kg now and I was 70kg when I came!
Well I've pretty much run out of crap to say now, but I will come up with more sooner or later, that's for sure. These journal entries are simply fuelled by immense boredom and lack of real work, so that's why they are so long and may repeat things now and then. And you don't have to email me about them if you don't want to, just if you got some comments or questions.
well that's all for now
-joramee
I went motorbiking on Tuesday with my Aunt and Uncle, they have 2 Suzuki Intruders. I think that's what they're called. Or Invaders. Whatever. It was pretty cool as I haven't sat on a motorcycle before. It's like a bicycle but faster, which is pretty much logical. I kept bumping helmets because I was too afraid to fall down. It was nice being cooled off on such a hot day, though. It was super hot this week hopefully it'll cool down soon.
I thought I might make some more observations regarding differences in Germany.
As some of you know already, cars drive pretty fast over here, even though curves and hills outnumber straightaways 100 to 1! Cars speed like crazy, especially in areas where there are no speed limits, like the Autobahn. Cars go 200kph easy on there, even cars that aren't sports cars.
Also, Stop signs are a joke here. They are so rare, and when you do see them they are just there to serve as 4-way stops when the traffic lights malfuncion, so you basically drive through a stop sign when the light is green. It's a weird feeling. The yield signs are in places where there should be stop signs, and places that should have yield signs, have no signs at all! Well some have these signs that are circles with a cross and an arrow pointing right. That means the car on your right goes first. But what if there are four people in the intersection at the same time? Also all the cars are standards, but I think I mentioned that already, and they mostly don't have air conditioning in them.
And some intersections are super complex, every single lane has their own light, so left, straight, right for four directions, that's 12 lights. So you'll never see someone trying to turn left on a green sitting in the middle of the intersection waiting for an opening. The pedestrian signals are a red dude standing and a green dude walking. Makes sense. Except the red dude just appears and stays solid, there's no flashing before hand. And of course no turning right on a red signal, that's obvious. The actual lights are on your side of the road too instead of on the other side, so you gotta duck down and look up to see your light change. Some even change backwards, so they go from red to amber to green, like in a race.
Curbs are made out of small 2-foot sections instead of a long continuous band of concrete. And there are lots of cobblestone driveways and parking lots, not so much ashphalt except on driving roads. The city center in Stuttgart is almost impossible to get through with a car. There is a big street called the "König Strasse" which is there for pedestrians only, so basically imagine downtown Toronto (Yonge Street for example), only instead of cars and people it's only people!
All the houses look the same too, they have one flat colour for the outer wall, and a pretty steep roof covered with rounded brick tiles. So no aluminum panelling or brick layers or sandy roof shingles over here. Windows are funny, you can either open them sideways like a door, or if you turn the handle 90 degrees you can pull them open so they tip towards the inside. I haven't seen one sliding window yet, except on cars. Also all houses have intercoms on them and lots have gates in front, locks all over the place. The Germans are paranoid somebody will get in, or maybe they just like it that way. You don't see lots of tall 13+ story appartments either, instead there's just lots of houses bunched up really tight. They cram them full of people, and the roofs usually don't have an attic so you can see the tip of the roof from the inside if you're on the top floor. Toilets don't have handles to pull down, instead they have buttons built into them, that you depress to start the flushing process. The button is sometimes about as big as my hand, but others are just little buttons. Either way, they are built into the toilet. Refrigerators and stoves are really small, they are even built into the kitchen decor sometimes to make it look like they're not there. For example, you open a random cupboard and whoa! You just opened the fridge door. Or hey! you opened up the stove vent!
I might have mentioned the lax cigarette and alcohol laws here, so you can skip this paragraph if you already know. But it's unbefrickenleavable to tell you the truth. They have cigarette vending machines on every corner. Each pack is 3€, which is about 5$ Canadian I think. So any little kid could buy them, and they are also in the cash checkout line in the grocery stores. Alcohol you can have when you're 16. It's all about the beer here of course, you can even drink it in public areas, like in the train station or bus terminal or anywhere you want. So lots of people drink and smoke here.
The stores that have grocery items also have everything else in them, including motor oil. So imagine Canadian Tire, Chapters, Zehrs, Sears, the LCBO, the Beer Store, and Future Shop all mixed into one. And they call all cereals Corn Flakes! So the original Corn Flakes are called 'Die Originalen'. Most people eat lunch and supper backwards, so for lunch they'll have a huge warm meal while for supper it's just bread with cold cuts and stuff. It screwed up my whole metabolism process, now I'm getting fat because of it. I'm 80kg now and I was 70kg when I came!
Well I've pretty much run out of crap to say now, but I will come up with more sooner or later, that's for sure. These journal entries are simply fuelled by immense boredom and lack of real work, so that's why they are so long and may repeat things now and then. And you don't have to email me about them if you don't want to, just if you got some comments or questions.
well that's all for now
-joramee
Wednesday, June 11, 2003
Matrix Reloaded thumbs down :(
Well I caved and went to see the movie in German!!! I just didn't want to miss it, that's all. Unfortunately, the action scenes were ho-hum as far as martial arts goes, and the bullet-time crap got boring really fast. It's not new enough and they didn't introduce anything that really made a big impact on me. Also some parts had lots of confusing talking in it that I didn't understand, and to tell you the truth even in English I don't think I would get it. The stuff about 6 different Neos or something... hopefully all who read this have seen it and and I haven't spoiled anything! The only part I liked was the two semis crashing head-on in slow-motion, that was pretty neat.
I went to see it with my uncle's girlfriend's God-daughter. If you think there are wedding bells in the air you're way off base because she has a boyfriend. She was also a little, um, big. Even my uncle made fun of it when she wasn't in hearing range, and I must admit, I laughed! Other turn-offs were that she was taller than me and smoked a lot. Otherwise she was pretty decent, and it was interesting talking to someone around the same age as me again.
So yeah last weekend was Pentecost weekend, and in Germany it is a big holiday weekend. I am now staying at my Uncle and his girlfriend's house, but I will just call her my Aunt now. They got everything, including a nice satellite setup. But I don't care about TV that much, specially crappy german TV that dubs all the american movies and shows over, that is an unforgiveable offence! Everyone is supposed to speak English, for crying out loud!. Oh well...the TV-commercials are funny too, they have a really over-excessive style to them, and sometime there are 10 minutes of commercials. The Germans are also more loose with naked images so sometimes you see bare-breasted ladies on TV in the middle of the day!
My Aunt has a son from a previous relationship and he is 14. He's already taller than me, which means he will get really tall. He's pretty spoiled since he is an only child, so he has lots of cool toys. He is a Nintendo fan like me so he has Gameboy Advance and Gamecube. It's funny seeing the games in German. Thankfully he is a pretty nice kid and lets me play, and I introduced him to emulation with the few games that I brought with me, and he is pretty interested in it, which surprised me since punk kids these days can't appreciate old classics. His name is Pascal, which would sound pretty weird in English, but apparently it's a common name here. I fixed his computer since it was in a a sad state. He has Windows Millenium, which sucks really bad. His mom was amazed I fixed it (all I did was re-install Windows!), and thanked me for saving her from a costly repair bill. The ONLY bad thing is that he doesn't have Internet access, not even modem!! It's mostly because his mom's afraid he'll download pirated stuff and share it with his buddies and then she'll end up in jail! She should hear my crazy download stories...
We went on a bike tour in the Rems river valley on Sunday, and I must say the scenery was nice. The only bad thing is I didn't buy a camera, so the memories are only inside me. We also had some beers on the way about 3 times because Germans are all about the beer. It wasn't complete beer though, it was mixed with Sprite, and they called it "Radler", which pretty much means "bicyclist". I think it's only a sorry excuse for a bike rider to drink beer! I only drank it once though, afterwards it was only Coke for me. Coke is good stuff but it wasn't on-the-rocks, so that made me a little sad.
I will only stay there at my Uncle's for one week and then go back to boring gramma and grampas house. It is really close to work here, I could even ride my bike here practically. Too bad my ass is all bruised from the weekend. I haven't ridden a bike for that long in a long time, so after a while I was sore and now I got to live with it. It's sort of like when I went snowboarding for the first time and I fell a lot. So it hurts to sit down now, possible need some Preparation-H , but that won't help I don't think. .
I gotta ask for more work soon from my boss or else I will go insane I think. But I'm too much of a wiener to do that, so hopefully he will come to me and give me stuff. The MS-Office XP he gave me will lose its 45-day trial soon. I tried putting in random numbers for the activation but it didn't work, and since I don't have Internet on this computer I can't activate it! I downloaded lots of ROMs and burned them already on the public computer. I had to erase my traces after because it looks pretty bad when all the history links are game-related. Today I wore my cool casino shirt but nobody noticed... but I felt like a star anyway.
Some of my family will be coming here over the next few weeks. I wish they would bring me presents of Gameboy Advance SP and a laptop computer, but I just don't see it happening. I am still sick from hay-fever related symptoms, and my eyes are always red. It looks live I've been doing some hard cocaine or something, not that I know what it looks like, I just heard offhand...
I know this entry is a little early in the coming, but there is finally something more to tell so I gotta let it all out at once. I wish I had some water, mineral water is the Devil's Drink, it's supposed to have healing qualities but I think it's poison swill from beneath the earth where liquid hot mag-ma dwells.
I finished reading Lord of the Rings. It was way better than the movies so far! I wish they wouldn't have made the movies so deviated from the books. But hopefully the third film will wrap things up in a nice way that doesn't skip too many good parts (like Shelob).
-joram
I went to see it with my uncle's girlfriend's God-daughter. If you think there are wedding bells in the air you're way off base because she has a boyfriend. She was also a little, um, big. Even my uncle made fun of it when she wasn't in hearing range, and I must admit, I laughed! Other turn-offs were that she was taller than me and smoked a lot. Otherwise she was pretty decent, and it was interesting talking to someone around the same age as me again.
So yeah last weekend was Pentecost weekend, and in Germany it is a big holiday weekend. I am now staying at my Uncle and his girlfriend's house, but I will just call her my Aunt now. They got everything, including a nice satellite setup. But I don't care about TV that much, specially crappy german TV that dubs all the american movies and shows over, that is an unforgiveable offence! Everyone is supposed to speak English, for crying out loud!. Oh well...the TV-commercials are funny too, they have a really over-excessive style to them, and sometime there are 10 minutes of commercials. The Germans are also more loose with naked images so sometimes you see bare-breasted ladies on TV in the middle of the day!
My Aunt has a son from a previous relationship and he is 14. He's already taller than me, which means he will get really tall. He's pretty spoiled since he is an only child, so he has lots of cool toys. He is a Nintendo fan like me so he has Gameboy Advance and Gamecube. It's funny seeing the games in German. Thankfully he is a pretty nice kid and lets me play, and I introduced him to emulation with the few games that I brought with me, and he is pretty interested in it, which surprised me since punk kids these days can't appreciate old classics. His name is Pascal, which would sound pretty weird in English, but apparently it's a common name here. I fixed his computer since it was in a a sad state. He has Windows Millenium, which sucks really bad. His mom was amazed I fixed it (all I did was re-install Windows!), and thanked me for saving her from a costly repair bill. The ONLY bad thing is that he doesn't have Internet access, not even modem!! It's mostly because his mom's afraid he'll download pirated stuff and share it with his buddies and then she'll end up in jail! She should hear my crazy download stories...
We went on a bike tour in the Rems river valley on Sunday, and I must say the scenery was nice. The only bad thing is I didn't buy a camera, so the memories are only inside me. We also had some beers on the way about 3 times because Germans are all about the beer. It wasn't complete beer though, it was mixed with Sprite, and they called it "Radler", which pretty much means "bicyclist". I think it's only a sorry excuse for a bike rider to drink beer! I only drank it once though, afterwards it was only Coke for me. Coke is good stuff but it wasn't on-the-rocks, so that made me a little sad.
I will only stay there at my Uncle's for one week and then go back to boring gramma and grampas house. It is really close to work here, I could even ride my bike here practically. Too bad my ass is all bruised from the weekend. I haven't ridden a bike for that long in a long time, so after a while I was sore and now I got to live with it. It's sort of like when I went snowboarding for the first time and I fell a lot. So it hurts to sit down now, possible need some Preparation-H , but that won't help I don't think. .
I gotta ask for more work soon from my boss or else I will go insane I think. But I'm too much of a wiener to do that, so hopefully he will come to me and give me stuff. The MS-Office XP he gave me will lose its 45-day trial soon. I tried putting in random numbers for the activation but it didn't work, and since I don't have Internet on this computer I can't activate it! I downloaded lots of ROMs and burned them already on the public computer. I had to erase my traces after because it looks pretty bad when all the history links are game-related. Today I wore my cool casino shirt but nobody noticed... but I felt like a star anyway.
Some of my family will be coming here over the next few weeks. I wish they would bring me presents of Gameboy Advance SP and a laptop computer, but I just don't see it happening. I am still sick from hay-fever related symptoms, and my eyes are always red. It looks live I've been doing some hard cocaine or something, not that I know what it looks like, I just heard offhand...
I know this entry is a little early in the coming, but there is finally something more to tell so I gotta let it all out at once. I wish I had some water, mineral water is the Devil's Drink, it's supposed to have healing qualities but I think it's poison swill from beneath the earth where liquid hot mag-ma dwells.
I finished reading Lord of the Rings. It was way better than the movies so far! I wish they wouldn't have made the movies so deviated from the books. But hopefully the third film will wrap things up in a nice way that doesn't skip too many good parts (like Shelob).
-joram
Saturday, June 7, 2003
Have you ever seen snails?
It rained here in a Germany for a few days and I saw snails all over the sidewalks when I was walking to work. It was weird because I've only ever seen them in pictures, not actually in real life. There are more of them here than earthworms. Some are almost 20 cm long, and they leave this long line of ooze behind them as they slither forward. There were some slugs too, but the coolest were the snails with their big shells.
As you can tell I am really bored right now. It's getting worse and worse over here as I slowly lose my mind. I am still working on the same project that I was a month ago, continually adding more and more stuff to a help file. It is as dull as anything, but I'm afraid if I ask for more work they will think I'm ungrateful, or else give me something too hard to do. It's really a strange situation.
The upside of work was that I found out my computer is actually pretty decent. It is a PentiumIII 1.0GHz, but it has a really bad graphics card. It actually does have a soundcard and I managed to find out what make it was and install it, so now I've got Winamp running all day. Some co-workers asked if they could get my songs, but they didn't appreciate my taste in music once they heard the strange mix. One guy invited me to this concert for a german singer (Herbert Grönemeyer), but it sounded like really cheesy music once I heard the mp3s, so I said no. My headphones are too short, so I have to turn my computer box around 90 degrees to have a decent slack on them (it's a desktop). The soundcard is kinda bad though, the bass and treble are horrible, but at least it brings me through the day.
There was a holiday in late May on a Thursday, and everyone worked more that week so they could have Friday off too. But I didn't, and I came on Friday and there was nobody here. It was cool, I downloaded a game and played it all day. I will never get that chance again, because there are no more free days coming up except one on a monday. As I sit here depressed I wonder how things could get worse. I guess I should be grateful that I have a job at all...
Some food/snack items I'm missing here in germany: peanut butter, slurpees, water-based popsicles (like the rainbow rockets, popsicle pete, etc.), water (they mostly only drink mineral water), good pizza (like Pizza Hut, Little Caesars, Pizza Pizza, etc.), KFC, Macintosh's Toffee, any Frito-Lay chips product (Tostitos, Doritoes, Cheetos, Munchies, Lays, etc), Tangy Taffy, concentrated juice cans (the ones you buy frozen and add water), Mr. Christy Cookies (including Oreos and Chunky Chocolate chip), Dentyne Ice gum, Skittles, Tim Hortons Donuts, Krispy Kreme donuts, Taco Bell, Harveys, Subway, AND... the list unfortunately could still go on for quite a bit!
Yes I miss all those things and that's all the more reason not to live here. Of course the Krauts have their own selection of goodies too, like really good freshly baked Pretzels, they taste pretty good they are huge like my hand. Of course all the above items are not necessities of life mind you, but I certainly realize that they aren't there when I want them. The drinking water thing is weird too, people do carry around bottles like in Canada, but it's not spring water but carbonated mineral water sewer backwash. And when you ask for water, that's what they give you. It's frightening. So I have to resort to drinking tap water, but the next day I was sick so I didn't do that any more.
My uncle told me the other day that the birds talk to him. I should have left the room right there but it was funny so I listened to him. He told me he has scitzophrenia, and he told me stories of what it's like, he says it's almost like when you're really drunk. It was a little sad but he was laughing about it, so I laughed with him. I don't know how I could live hearing voices all day, but he's managed to do it thus far. I just wish he would wash himself though because his B.O. sticks to the walls when he walks around the house, and it stays in the room for like 5 minutes before it dies off. If you want to know what he looks like, just imagine Santa Clause but with dark hair, and only half of his teeth. Yeah that's right...it's freaky. My cousin's 3-year-old son calls him 'crazy paul'.
My cousin came from Australia during the last week of May. It was cool talking english again, except sometimes I didn't know what he was saying because of the accent. Also there are different words for things, they mostly use the British terms for things rather than the American ones. He is a business-type person and he has all these big plans with real-estate and stuff, I didn't understand half of it but he is a cool guy. He is married with 2 little kids, and they came too, and sometimes I wonder how someone so much better than me in every way could be related to me.
I still sit at home bored a lot, but last Sunday a family from the church invited me over for the afternoon and there was something to do. I still wish for my computer a lot, and how good of an item it is to have when one is bored. I've started to accept my doomed summer though, and I might as well keep on living. Deathwishes have crossed my mind, but I always overreact like that, I'm like a spoiled child. I have been sick and stuffed nose issues all of May, I don't know why, probably side-effects of my hay fever. Hopefully it will go away soon...
Well I'm going to write these entries at random intervals whenever I can. Some of you haven't even replied to my first entry yet, but that's ok, I'll keep writing them anyway, for myselfI don't think I ever want to live here because things are just worse here in every way, but if things start to look up I might consider it. The way I see things is that if you got a decent computer and a fast internet connection, it doesn't matter where on the globe you are.
-German Joram
As you can tell I am really bored right now. It's getting worse and worse over here as I slowly lose my mind. I am still working on the same project that I was a month ago, continually adding more and more stuff to a help file. It is as dull as anything, but I'm afraid if I ask for more work they will think I'm ungrateful, or else give me something too hard to do. It's really a strange situation.
The upside of work was that I found out my computer is actually pretty decent. It is a PentiumIII 1.0GHz, but it has a really bad graphics card. It actually does have a soundcard and I managed to find out what make it was and install it, so now I've got Winamp running all day. Some co-workers asked if they could get my songs, but they didn't appreciate my taste in music once they heard the strange mix. One guy invited me to this concert for a german singer (Herbert Grönemeyer), but it sounded like really cheesy music once I heard the mp3s, so I said no. My headphones are too short, so I have to turn my computer box around 90 degrees to have a decent slack on them (it's a desktop). The soundcard is kinda bad though, the bass and treble are horrible, but at least it brings me through the day.
There was a holiday in late May on a Thursday, and everyone worked more that week so they could have Friday off too. But I didn't, and I came on Friday and there was nobody here. It was cool, I downloaded a game and played it all day. I will never get that chance again, because there are no more free days coming up except one on a monday. As I sit here depressed I wonder how things could get worse. I guess I should be grateful that I have a job at all...
Some food/snack items I'm missing here in germany: peanut butter, slurpees, water-based popsicles (like the rainbow rockets, popsicle pete, etc.), water (they mostly only drink mineral water), good pizza (like Pizza Hut, Little Caesars, Pizza Pizza, etc.), KFC, Macintosh's Toffee, any Frito-Lay chips product (Tostitos, Doritoes, Cheetos, Munchies, Lays, etc), Tangy Taffy, concentrated juice cans (the ones you buy frozen and add water), Mr. Christy Cookies (including Oreos and Chunky Chocolate chip), Dentyne Ice gum, Skittles, Tim Hortons Donuts, Krispy Kreme donuts, Taco Bell, Harveys, Subway, AND... the list unfortunately could still go on for quite a bit!
Yes I miss all those things and that's all the more reason not to live here. Of course the Krauts have their own selection of goodies too, like really good freshly baked Pretzels, they taste pretty good they are huge like my hand. Of course all the above items are not necessities of life mind you, but I certainly realize that they aren't there when I want them. The drinking water thing is weird too, people do carry around bottles like in Canada, but it's not spring water but carbonated mineral water sewer backwash. And when you ask for water, that's what they give you. It's frightening. So I have to resort to drinking tap water, but the next day I was sick so I didn't do that any more.
My uncle told me the other day that the birds talk to him. I should have left the room right there but it was funny so I listened to him. He told me he has scitzophrenia, and he told me stories of what it's like, he says it's almost like when you're really drunk. It was a little sad but he was laughing about it, so I laughed with him. I don't know how I could live hearing voices all day, but he's managed to do it thus far. I just wish he would wash himself though because his B.O. sticks to the walls when he walks around the house, and it stays in the room for like 5 minutes before it dies off. If you want to know what he looks like, just imagine Santa Clause but with dark hair, and only half of his teeth. Yeah that's right...it's freaky. My cousin's 3-year-old son calls him 'crazy paul'.
My cousin came from Australia during the last week of May. It was cool talking english again, except sometimes I didn't know what he was saying because of the accent. Also there are different words for things, they mostly use the British terms for things rather than the American ones. He is a business-type person and he has all these big plans with real-estate and stuff, I didn't understand half of it but he is a cool guy. He is married with 2 little kids, and they came too, and sometimes I wonder how someone so much better than me in every way could be related to me.
I still sit at home bored a lot, but last Sunday a family from the church invited me over for the afternoon and there was something to do. I still wish for my computer a lot, and how good of an item it is to have when one is bored. I've started to accept my doomed summer though, and I might as well keep on living. Deathwishes have crossed my mind, but I always overreact like that, I'm like a spoiled child. I have been sick and stuffed nose issues all of May, I don't know why, probably side-effects of my hay fever. Hopefully it will go away soon...
Well I'm going to write these entries at random intervals whenever I can. Some of you haven't even replied to my first entry yet, but that's ok, I'll keep writing them anyway, for myselfI don't think I ever want to live here because things are just worse here in every way, but if things start to look up I might consider it. The way I see things is that if you got a decent computer and a fast internet connection, it doesn't matter where on the globe you are.
-German Joram
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