I’ve been working as a freelancer for the past 6 weeks since my arrival in Germany and yesterday I decided to take a real job. I made the 5-hour train ride all the way to Hamburg to meet the new boss and sign a contract and then rode all the way back. So starting next month I am what the Germans call, an “Angestellter”, meaning that I am employed. This makes a lot of things significantly easier, since it isn’t really a problem now to get a work visa, etc.
The apartment is coming along. I finally got some furniture this past weekend and my clothes washer-dryer unit is pretty neat, as it is just one unit that washes AND dries my clothes. Can’t complain about that. I’ve obtained some dishes and made a few trips to the local Ikea store to get ideas about furniture. I’ve got just about everything I need, except I still have no tables at all, no desk, no coffee table, nothing. So for now my work consists of sitting on my couch with my laptop computer on my lap.
After waiting 3 weeks for my internet service to be connected and activated, I finally received a letter from the internet service provider saying that they cannot fulfill my requested service contract for some unknown reason, so it looks like I have to go with someone else for service. It is kind of ridiculous that I have to wait so long for a DSL connection in this country. The house is wired and everything. They should be able to flip a switch and send me a bill. I guess things just move slowly in this country.
That is all for now.
That is how many days I have waited, looked forward to, and thought yesterday would never come. I still clearly remember my very first day of school. I entered the 1st grade at Riemerling Grundschule in the outskirts of Munich, Germany on September 11th, 1990 at the ripe young age of 6 years old. Every single day for 6122 days between now and yesterday, I looked forward to that day, in which I could finally say I am done. 6122 days of dreading the grueling torture that is school.
I have struggled through math class, learned to write perfect handwriting with an ink fountain pen, learned, forgot, and re-learned the rules of grammar in English and mastered the German language, as well as gained a solid grasp on the basics and fundamentals of the Russian language, made and lost many good friends, moved many times and attended 8 different schools between 1st and 12th grade, attended college for 6 years, at two separate colleges through 5 different majors, accumulated over 300 college credits and finally, finally walked across the stage yesterday as a diploma was handed to me in front of my father, mother, stepfather, uncle, grandmother, some very close friends, and most importantly, my girlfriend, Karen, who has conquered my heart. Indeed yesterday can count to one of the greatest days of my life. No longer will I be dreading class tomorrow or the essay due next week. I have finally achieved a status in my life that I have been longing for for 6122 days. What comes next?
Tomorrow morning I will leave what has been my home for the past 11 years and embrace what has been my home for many years before that. I will be flying into Munich after a long flight and jump right into work. I am overwhelmed with sadness and joy at the same time. Joy for finally finishing something of significance in my life. Joy for going back to my favorite place on earth, for getting to see my little sister, and my brother and some close friends. Sadness for leaving behind my mom and some other close friends, and most importantly, my girlfriend, with whom I have fallen in love with.
It has definitely been an adventure, and for the first time in 6122 days I feel that I am truly free and the world is just another adventure waiting to be explored. There is nothing holding me back from pursuing my dreams and my future. I have succeeded. I have graduated. I am done. I am now Alumni. However, if the University thinks I am going to join their Alumni Association and give them even more money, they are definitely mistaken. I am already in the possession of the most expensive piece of paper I have ever seen, I don’t need another. 
I have made the decision to return to the place of my upbringing after I graduate from Oregon State University. Approximately one month from now I will be walking at my commencement ceremony and two short days later I will be boarding an airplane to embrace my new home in Munich, Germany.
This is going to be a rather interesting adventure for me. Although I grew up in the Munich area, I left there when I was only 12 years old and in the past 11 years that I have spent in the US, I have, for all intents and purposes, become very americanized. I have visited Munich many times since moving to the US, but it has only been as a tourist. I have spent the last 5 years or so brushing up my German skills and will be receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in German (language and culture/history/literature) this June. I won’t be going through the culture shock experienced by most expatriates, however this is indeed going to be a major change in my life.
I have done a lot of soul-searching throughout my time in College. If nothing else, I have learned a lot about myself. In studying German, I have learned a great deal about the English language. In studying German culture I have learned a great deal about the American culture. It’s funny how that happens. In drinking American beer, I have learned to really appreciate German beer.
When looking back over the last 6 years since graduating high school, my first thought is that I didn’t really learn anything at University. It is just a huge bureaucratic mess that tries to shuffle as many students through it as possible so they can take our money. I definitely didn’t end up where I started out. I have changed my major more times than some people change their clothes in a week. I have changed my views on life many times and my interests have changed significantly from when I first started. So looking back and realizing that I spent an enormous amount of money on a degree that probably won’t relate much to my chosen career path at first is a little disheartening. But taking a step back from this initial thought, I realize that I wouldn’t go back to change any part of it, given the chance. I have learned a great deal about Business, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, and Liberal Arts. But mainly, I have learned about myself. I now know what I don’t want to do with my life. I’m still not sure what I do want to do, but I know where I want to start out. That is the first big step. It took me 6 years to figure that out, but along the way I have met some amazing people. In the last few years I have made friendships that will probably last a lifetime. I wouldn’t trade that for anything.
So in the last month that I am here, I have really taken some time to think about life in America. The things I will miss, the things I won’t. Of course people say the grass is always greener on the other side. I look forward to moving to Germany and somewhere deep down I think that everything will be perfect and I won’t ever look back. Well these were my thoughts 11 years ago, when I decided to move to America with my mother in the first place. At first everything was great and fun. A new culture to get used to, new people, new school. But I started missing things about Germany. Things that were more important than Root Beer or Dr. Pepper (hope I can find that stuff in Germany). At this point in my life, my friends hear me raving about the great food/beer/cities in Germany, but really that stuff isn’t worth moving to another country for. And I would hate to try to convince someone that they should move to Germany because they have better beer. Everyone has to do what is going to make them happy. As a third-culture kid, I can only say that home is where the heart is. I find myself disgruntled with American laws and politics frequently (will devote a separate blog post for that), but I think at this point in my life, my main reasons for leaving are family, friends, and career opportunity. Food, Beer and Fun are a close second. I think this will be a great opportunity for me to really reconnect with my father, see my brother frequently and hopefully be a part of my little sister’s life. She is 7 now and I have only spent very little time with her in her short life. Some of my best friends that I have made in college have somehow found their way over to Europe. In fact, all my friends are leaving Corvallis this summer, so I won’t be missing anything here (other than my mom, of course). So I’ll be leaving all that is familiar behind here, but I think my heart is in Munich right now. I will be closer to some of my family, I will be closer to most of my friends, I will be enjoying a brand new life German-style. I have re-established contact to some of my friends from grade school in Munich. It will be interesting to see what these people are like now, if we still have anything in common. Yes, it will be a great adventure indeed.
So for now I am trying to make the most of my final month in Corvallis. I will be spending a lot of time with some close friends here, and my mother, and I will be taking a small trip to visit my grandmother before I go. Aside from that, most of my time will be spent preparing for a move across the ocean. I can only take the bare minimum with me, so selling stuff and giving stuff away and asking my mom to store some stuff for me has been a little sad. But I am excited for what might await me in the new city. I am mostly bummed that my toaster oven won’t be coming along with me.
That is all for now. Goodbye, Corvallis! Germany, here I come!
… but at the top of this list are MySpace, Microsoft, and Albany, OR. What do you think the world would be better off without? I’m just curious about what gets other people really riled up. Leave me a comment with your pet peeve.
There is a specific chain of events, which happened to me recently, that couldn’t have been more unfortunate. I was the owner of one of those Samsung smartphones that was running Windows Mobile 2003. The phone was pretty cool, but it had its share of bugs. I could live with most of them, but overall the thing was great as a PDA and terrible as a phone. At best I could get a day out of the battery if I didn’t make any phone calls or use the Wi-Fi or anything like that. This made it a very expensive tool to see what time it was. On top of that, it wasn’t really intuitive to use the phone function. It just seemed like the phone part and the PDA part didn’t really know each other existed. Well I got used to it anyway and just carried around a huge bulky phone that I ended hating after several months. So I went down to the store and found a pretty good deal on one of those new Motorola KRZR phones. This ended up being worse than the Samsung, since all the neat features of the phone had been disabled by my service carrier, and the remaining ones were extremely broken beyond any kind of usability. Failing to find any kind of decent software hack to get the back to its original Motorola functionality, I decided to return the phone to the retailer before my trial period expired. The retailer was happy to exchange the phone for a similarly priced way more functional LG enV. However, they didn’t have a way to copy my contacts from the KRZR to the LG. Not a problem, since all my contacts were still backed up on that stupid Samsung running Windows. Somehow, in the time it took for me to return the KRZR, leave the store with my new LG, and get home to the Samsung (which was working fine before I left that day), the Samsung completely crashed all by itself and did a handy little factory reset on itself, completely annihilating all my personal data including 8 years worth of collected phone numbers!!!
This is strange, since that phone never gave me any trouble like that in the 8 months that I had it. It’s almost like it knew that as soon as I actually really needed it to not destroy my data it did everything in its power to anger me. There was nothing I could do. Now I have a nice new LG phone with the 7 phone numbers in it that I could remember off the top of my head. I am livid!
The only thing that makes me feel better about the situation, is that deep down I am telling myself that Microsoft uses their own software to run their entire network infrastructure, including their backups. That is punishment enough, if you ask me. I severely hope that they lose 8 years worth of code or something.
Well enough ranting for now. If you are reading this and wondering why I haven’t called you in a while, it is because I no longer have your number. Please send me an e-mail with it, so I can stay in touch.
Ξ October 24th, 2006 | → 4 Comments | ∇ Blues |
It’s approaching way too fast. I woke up this morning and realized that today is my last day being 22 years old. This is kind of scary for me. That means that tomorrow I will wake up and be a year older. This kind of thing makes me reflect on life a little. Where has all the time gone? It seems like only yesterday I was graduating high school, or starting college, or learning how to drive. But judging by the date, those things happened a long time ago. Another year in the life of Jabba gone with the wind. What will tomorrow bring? Just a new number to memorize when someone asks me my age? Or is it a whole new chapter in the saga that is my life? Am I any more grown up than I was yesterday? Probably not. Will the guy at the door still ask to see my identification before he lets me into a bar? Will I still have to prove my age in order to order a beer with dinner? Probably. Do I look older? I am still working on growing those sideburns I’ve been longing for for the past ten years. I don’t feel any older, but this is how it goes. Next thing I know I’ll be 43 years old and still wondering where my life is going or what awaits me around the next turn. I guess it’s true when they say you never grow up, you just grow old. But it seems like I just turned 22. Now an entire year has passed and I don’t even know where all the time has gone. I guess if I take a step back, a lot has happened in the last year. I know I didn’t own an awesome toaster oven a year ago. I didn’t have a tiny batcheloresque apartment a year ago. But am I any closer to my goals? Graduation? Fame and Fortune? I don’t think so. But I know I’m getting older and things are just getting more and more confusing and unsure. My mother was my age now when I was born. She had already been married for over five years. My dad was working on a PhD by this age. I don’t know where I’m going to be in five years. Heck, I don’t even know where I’m going to be in one year. Who am I going to know two years from now? Am I even doing what I want to do with my life? I know I’ve been working on a few undergraduate degrees for way too long. This is that time of year when thousands of questions come up in my mind and I can’t find any answers. I always thought that the older you get, the clearer things become. That is turning out to be the biggest misconception ever.
Well, all good things come to an end, I guess. The last day in Stuttgart didn’t yield much entertainment. We mostly relaxed and took long naps, since we had to be up at 4 the next morning to catch our respective trains. The flight home was pretty eventless, save for the annoying immigration, customs, baggage check, and security stuff they make you go through. But after a total of 14 hours of flying time, I was back in Oregon. After an additional three hours of traffic filled highways, I ended up at home and ate dinner and relaxed. Due to jet-lag, I didn’t actually get to sleep until around 6:30 the next morning, but hopefully that will pass in the next few days.
Classes and work start again on Monday, so I have two days to fully relax and get re-Americanized. I’m currently coping with the absence of Bavarian beer and European food. Perhaps I’ll make a quick stop down at the grocery store and see if I can’t fry up a Bratwurst or two. And I believe there is a store in town that sells some Munich beer. Maybe the good times don’t have to end right away…
If you plan on going to a golf course club house, because you were invited to see a motivational show by the guest of honor’s personal assistant, make sure to respect the No-Denim Policy. Seriously. Don’t even try to get in wearing jeans. The dress code is strictly enforced. And jeans are just not acceptable.
(Thanks for the invite, Mike! I had a great time. 
)
So I am probably a little biased here, since I grew up in a country where things are generally thought over with logic in mind, before being implemented. And I’ll admit, that ice has its place in life. Ice, or frozen water as it is, has many uses. It makes things cold, usually sacrificing itself for the cause. Pretty nifty stuff. When it melts, it just turns to harmless water. Of course there are other substances that do a better job at keeping things cold, like freon, or liquid nitrogen, but those are generally expensive, and you don’t just want that stuff out in the atmosphere for no reason. So it seems that it is a pretty good idea to have ice around. If you go on an excursion for the day, you can put a bunch of ice in a cooler and it will kind of keep your beer and soda warm for a few hours. And afterwards, you just have a cooler full of water. So I really don’t hate ice. It has its purpose. But whose idea was it to go ahead and decide to put frozen water into a glass of soda, in order to make it cold? Isn’t that what refrigerators are for? Really, I can’t grasp the concept. Here is a list of reasons why it is a bad idea:
- Ice touches your mouth when trying to drink, necessitating a straw.
- Ice displaces liquid. Yep, when you buy a 16 oz. soda, you are indeed getting 12 oz. of ice and 4 oz of soda.
- Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Just transerred and transformed. While removing heat from the soda, the ice is absorbing the heat. Therefore melting at the same rate that it cools.
- Ice causes soda to go flat very quickly.
- As the ice turns to water, the soda becomes diluted, making it virtually undrinkable.
Now, to be fair, here is the list of benefits to putting ice in your soda:
- It makes certain parts of the soda slightly colder.
- If you put enough ice in, you can make the entire soda seem ice-cold.
However, those same benefits can be achieved by chilling the soda before consumption. Now, I have some friends who think I’m crazy for my views about ice. They love ice. I can understand that in this country soda is very inexpensive, and virtually every establishment offers its clients free soda refills. So the displacement thing might not hold validity. And as you are reading the list of reasons why ice is a bad idea, and secretly thinking that I am dead wrong on this issue, let me ask you this: If ice doesn’t affect your soda at all in a negative way, why don’t people put ice in their beer? Or in their milk? (Although, I have seen this done, and it still kind of grosses me out.)
Where I grew up, soda is kept cold in the refrigerator. In fact, soda fountains have a cooling system built in. I’m no expert in the soda fountain industry, but I believe that American soda fountains also have a cooling system in place and running, but just not set to cool very much. So perhaps, the electric bill is higher, if the refrigeration unit were turned up a little more? Maybe. But how much does it cost to freeze water by the gallon all day? How much does the water cost? Are you saving money by creating ice to put in your soda, rather than just cooling the soda a little more? I can’t imagine. It takes more energy to cool water to its freezing point than it takes to cool soda an extra 5-10 degrees. In Germany, I have never encountered an establishment that offers its customers free refills on their beverages, although I have heard rumors that such places might exist in the meantime. But I haven’t really needed a free refill in Germany, since when I pay for a half liter of soda, I indeed get a half liter of soda. And more than that is probably unhealthy anyway. In fact, I went to a McDonald’s in Germany once, and noticed that they are pretty American about it, but do have some German tendencies built in. Their soda fountains are not cooled sufficiently, and they don’t give refills. So you order a large coke, and get a half liter of luke-warm soda. But there is no ice. Noticing that they have warm soda, I asked them if they had ice. And sure enough, they do have ice available on special request. But the look I got when ordering a soda with ice was priceless. It just said, “You are paying for a half liter of cola, and you are willing to give half of it away so the other half can be a little colder and diluted?!? You must not be from around here!” And after thinking about it, I realized that it is very true. Ice is not a solution to warm soda. The pros are grossly outweighed by the cons.
I have one computer, whose sole purpose in life is to be a media machine. Back in the day, this box had pretty much bare minimum hardware in order run Windows. Something like 256MB of RAM, of which 32 were shared with onboard video. But it worked. I plug a TV into it and pop in a dvd and it works. AVI files on the hard drive never gave me any trouble, either. My biggest concern was that I had to have several different applications for different types of media. iTunes does exactly what I want it to with mp3’s. BSplayer does exactly what I want for digital media files, like .avi or .mpg, etc. PowerDVD ($$) works nice for DVDs (kinda). But really, I want one app that does everything. And I want a simple user interface. In fact, I would rather just hook this machine up to a TV, unplug the monitor, keyboard and mouse, and just have a remote. What a concept! Well, along came Windows XP Media Center 2005. Woohoo! NOT! After doubling my RAM, and installing a 64MB video card (essentially doubling the video memory), Media Center actually starts up. And it plays DVDs, after installing PowerDVD (I guess Microsoft needs PowerDVD alongside it, so that it knows what to do). And… oops, my TV card isn’t supported in Media Center. Okay. New TV card. Alright. now we’re getting somewhere. Got myself the cool Microsoft remote control and everything works. I can watch DVDs, AVIs, MPGs, listen to mp3s, all within one easy to use interface, with a remote. Cool. But… it is soooo slow. And it crashes more often than Windows 95 Beta. What gives? And the remote only works in Media Center. So when I have to install yet another lovely Microsoft update, I either have to connect a keyboard or use VNC…
But what’s that? There is yet another thing that Linux can do for me? Freevo? MythTV? There are open-source alternatives? And they are free? What? So here I go again with another project. Bye bye Windows. I can’t get Linux installed on this thing fast enough. Wish me luck on my Freevo project this weekend. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.
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