I’m really looking forward to watching good football matches…

It’s a pity England isn’t playing. Fingers crossed for Sweden and Germany although I don’t believe they’re going to win the cup.

My insider’s tip (although I don’t count as an insider) is Portugal, closely followed by the Netherlands. Oh my god, I should not put this down here, I’ll be ridiculed in three weeks when everything turned out to be completely differten…like in the last European Championship when Greece won although nobody had thought this possible…But that’s what I like so much about football. Everything is possible. Every team can beat every other team any time – at least under these conditions.

Btw, I think Switzerland will fare quite well also.

I’m sooo looking forward to watching as many matches as possible…

…somehow I am losing the ability of slicing my life into little blogable episodes. Well, actually, I’m not losing it altogether but the episodes I can think of have become so small that they are hardly worth posting.

I have, however, (at least I think so) gathered enough episodes to make for blog entry.

Working for ABB is a great thing. It is really, really nice to do some hard, honest physical labour in-between studying and thinking. A great feature are the actual tests. Especially the “internal arc tests”. Imagine a circuit breaker switch in a big housing (approx. 2 by 2 by 2 meters) which is to be tested for the operator’s safety. In case of an internal fault (an arc) there must be no harm to persons in the vicinity. So what is done is the following: a tiny wire in the housing (which provides a short-circuit) is loaded with 40 kA (40,000 amps – your kettle probably needs 10 to 15 amps) evaporates and therefore leads to an arc. Due to the heat the air inside the housing expands and pressure builds up. The housing has to withstand that pressure. It is possible to think of this test as a crash test for switchgear. You destroy something on purpose to see whether people operating it will be hurt. Man, those are bangs… KA-BOOOM!! (It’s the child in me that likes this job so much…)

Another thing is with the newspaper. Due to a lack of affluence I had to cancel the liberal, slightly left-wing daily “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. Instead Tanja and I now receive the weekly “Die Zeit” which is also liberal and very intellectual. Well, that’s not the point here. We also ordered a trial subscription of “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” which is a less liberal, slightly conservative daily. All three are highly recmommendable papers living up to the highest standards of journalism. After 3 years of left wing journalism, however, it is really hard to read a conservative newspaper – even though I have recently found myself becoming more conservative than I had ever been before. But it is nice (or annoying, depending on the mood) to observe how the same pros and cons, the same facts about a topic can be arranged in different ways, which accordingly create the different political stance of newspaper articles about the very same phenomenon. It’s probably a good thing to change newspapers every now and then to remain aware of this.

Thirdly, I now know the topic of my final oral exam in English. Well, the literature part of the final oral exam. It will be two cross-sections of American literature. First: “America in non-fiction”, including the following works:

Edward W. Said: Humanism and Democratic Criticism; Mark Twain: Life on the Mississippi; Ralph W. Emerson: Self-Reliance; Nature; Henry D. Thoreau: Walden, or Life in the woods; Hamilton, Madison & Jay: Federalist papers; Benjamin Franklin: The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin AND EITHER Henry Luce: The American century OR Thorstein Veblen: The theory of the leisure class.

And this is only the first cross-section. The other is: “War in American fiction” and will include:

Ambrose Bierce: The coup de grâce, The affair at coulter’s notch, One of the missing, An occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, One kind of officer; Joseph Heller: Catch 22; John Dos Passos: Three soldiers; Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse-five; Ernest Hemingway: A farewell to arms; William Faulkner: Soldiers’ pay; Norman Mailer: The naked and the dead; James F. Cooper: The last of the Mohicans.

Quite a lot of reading. I’m not sure whether I should be happy or afraid. On the one hand I’m looking forward to this great input of scholarly and literary expertise to my humble knowlege container. On the other hand I am frightened by the sheer amount of reading. Fortunately the exam will only be in January.

So far so good, this is about all the news I’ve got for you now.

Saturday evening we invited to Barbecue. Another family from our house (they are both German but she is of Jordanian descent) and a couple from Cologne (he is German and she is Spanish). When I was on my way to the Turkish butcher who sold me some pork-free sausages (lamb and turkey) – because the Jordanian woman is Muslim and doesn’t eat porc – Tanja received a phone call from Brussels. Daniel and Anne-Sophie (he is Italian and she is French) had the weekend off and decided to visit us. So we ended up eating a mixture of Turkish and German sausage, German and Spanish salad and talking German, English and Spanish. Cool. I like such challenges to my linguistic skills. My English is okay, Spanish I understand somewhat but don’t speak. I should practice more…

Monday was my first day of work. I think I will enjoy the work at ABB’s testing facilities. My tasks will include preparing tests (connecting the DUT, adjust and connect the capacitor bank, inductor bank and resistors), minor maintenance tasks, henchman to the skilled workers and, during testing, hacking in the measurements into the PC. This seems to be very much the kind of job I will appreciate. Diverting and challenging. Moreover, the colleagus seem to be pretty nice as well.

Friday and Saturday I will attend a seminar on intercultural communication I’m looking forward to. And the weather is marvellous, so I feel quite well right now.

It is incredible how time is flying and how many things are happening…

The semester break was nuts. First there was an exam about Electrical Machines. In the preparation I proved Darwin’s theory wrong, as it was the first time someone who was stupid was advantaged for being stupid. Due to a mistake in the administration they had changed the room and time of the exam (from noon to 8 am) and so I arrived AFTER the exam. (I hadn’t checked properly). But the people in the institute said that it was okay because they couldn’t email me and that it could not be expected that the students check the announcements every so and so often. So they gave me another date a week later – and a week more of preparation…

In the two weeks after this exam I wrote an essay about standardization in Germany’s vocational education. Then I celebrated St Patrick’s day and got unbelievably wasted.

After St Patrick’s day I plunged into the preparation of the very final very oral exam in electrical engineering which took place on the day my friends from Sweden and England arrived in Köln for a nice weekend of party, sightseeing and talking in English. I was convinced I would be very ill on the monday they left because of the jam-packed schedule and the overwork. But I’m still in good health. And the new semester has now begun. No rest for the wicked!

I can hardly believe how fast time flies. Maybe it’s the two hours I spend in the train (almost) daily? Is it the fact that living together with Tanja was the best idea since the invention of the dishwasher? Or does coffee do strange things with your mind?

Which brings me to something else: when we celebrated Tobias’ stag night (and he’s married now, for almost one month…oh dear) we went to the Jameson’s Irish Pub here in Köln and I performed in the Karaoke competiton. When the Swedes/English visitors were here we went there again and complete strangers said “Hi Max!” when they saw me. I asked “how come you know my name?” and they said “well, you look like someone who comes here regularly, whose name is Max!”.

Well, I’m not sure. Have I, on the first occasion in the Jameson’s, made such a fool of myself that they remembered my name? (They call out the names of people who do Karaoke). Is there a doppelgänger, who also frequents the Jameson’s? Or is it as Tobias suggested: that I have an alias who takes over when I am unconscious during the nights, going out to party in the Cologne pubs all night? That would explain why I’m often so tired…

Anyway, my life is indeed far away from boring. I don’t even find the time to update my blog regularly…

Cheers!

Yesterday, when I arrived at Cologne main station and disembarked from the train, I was approached by a stranger who addressed me in English and asked me for directions to the nearest youth hostel. I showed him the way as good as I could and he told me that his name was Brian, he was from California, on a trip through Europe, he had lost his friends somewhere in the train in Belgium and he was stranded in Cologne. When the youth hostel didn’t have a place for him I did something I can still hardly believe: I invited him to stay at my place! Well, Tanja was on a business trip, so that was not a problem, but bringing a complete stranger to your flat? And he agreed, being glad he had found a place where to sleep in the night. (A bit strange for him, too, to walk with a complete stranger to an unknown apartment…)

Anyway, we talked a lot (or rather he talked a lot and I filled the gaps) about this and that (mainly politics, god and religion) and I tried my intercultural communication skills. It was kind of nice. We realised that we had some very different points-of-view but it was still kinda cool.

Today I walked him to the tourist information, recommended some places to visit in Cologne and bade him good bye. Really strange, you know. Even now I can hardly believe I really did that.

Anyway, I have a new favourite song: Amaranth by Nightwish.

And I have a job. At ABB’s medium voltage switchgear factory in Ratingen near Düsseldorf. I’m sooooo looking forward to the engineering work in the high-power and high-voltage testing labs they have.

Last but not least: I’m looking forward to be visited by my favourite Swedish and English friends.

My life is AWESOME!

Tuesday a documentary about WW II was shown at my university. Entry was free and, as I’m usually interested in history, I decided to watch it.

It is called: “You enter Germany. Bloody Huertgen and the Siegfried line” or “You enter Germany. Hürtgenwald – der lange Kampf am Westwall”. The Hürtgenwald is situated in the Eifel, in the triangle between Aachen, Monschau and Düren. American and German units fought a bitter battle there in the winter 1944/45. The Americans could, due to the terrain, not make use of their superior power and were stopped for a couple of months. The Germans resisting fought a futile battle as the war was clearly lost. Still, about 25,000 soldiers (the number cannot be reconstructed clearly) from both sides lost their lives. They showed interviews of veterans from both sides.

But my point here is not an historical essay about a battle of WW II. I rather want to exress my gratitude that I live in a time in which the enmity between Germany and the rest of the world has abated. I am grateful that I can call some persons from England and the USA friends. I am grateful that I don’t have to fight in a war.

If war is in a remote place, it seems remote, almost unreal. But to see, in grainy, shaky black and white, places that you know, that you have been to, filled with tanks, soldiers, gunfire, war … It’s shocking. And then the thought that our grandfathers fought that war.

I am grateful to live now. In the time of the ERASMUS exchange program that enabled me to get to know people from other countries. Our grandfathers had to become soldiers to meet people from other countries – and then they met with the intention of killing each other. How sad that is.

The Bundesverfassungsgericht [Federal Constitutional Court] is a federal court for jurisdiction about matters that concern the German constitution. (We call our constitution “Grundgesetz” or basic law). It should be comparable to the US supreme court.

In one of those historical coincidences, just a few days after I had written the post about our government trying to reduce personal rights, the Bundesverfassungsgericht judged a state law unconstitutional. This said state law (of North-rhine Westphalia) allowed the police to spy on personal computers of literally everybody via internet.

According to the Bundesverfassungsgericht, the human rights of article 10 (Brief- Post- und Fernmeldegeheimnis [letters, mail and telephone are protected]) 13 (Unverletzlichkeit der Wohnung [integrity of one's home is granted]) and the “Recht auf informationelle Selbstbestimmung” [right to decide about what personal information one wants to share] are, due to the widespread use of PCs and internet, not sufficient anymore and so the court created the new human right of “Gewährleistung der Vertraulichkeit und Integrität informationstechnischer Systeme” [the secrecy and integrity of IT systems is granted]. Furthermore, the court decided that only a judge could grant the police the right to violate this human right, and this only if “überragende Rechtsgüter” [supreme objects of legal protection], as life and liberty of a person or the integrity of the country, are threatened.

So, basically, the state and the police can try to obtain data from PCs, but only, if a judge allows them to on the grounds that one of the exceptions to the human right as defined by the Bundesverfassungsgericht applies. Very likely, in the planning of terroristic attacks the exceptions apply.

I think it was a good day for the human rights in Germany the day before yesterday. And I had a hell lot of trouble translating these terms of jurisdiction. Again, credits for these go to leo.org. Initially I wanted to provide the translations as footnotes but that would have been even worse, I found, than giving them directly in the text.

Well, thank you for reading. May be I’ll update you sometime about the things that I’m doing recently.

You have noticed the new header. It is the work of Tobias.
Why I put it there? It is a banner that should direct people’s attention toward the fact, that our federal government is in the progress of reducing the personal rights of individuals. All for the sake of better protection against terrorism or the possiblity to fight crime better. There are a couple of things that became law recently aimed to enlarge the powers of the police and reduce the freedom of Germany’s citizens. (e.g. the protection of journalists, doctors and priests from wiretapping was restricted; data-collection (phone-connections etc) is now done as a default and not only in case of suspicious behaviour; some more is on its way).

This banner criticises just that. On the background of the colours of Germany’s flag there are three things: On the right a heterogeneous group of citizens, in the middle the “Federal Eagle” (Anyone a better suggestion for translating “Bundesadler”?)** with its head replaced by a CCTV camera spying on the citizens; and finally on the left the slogan “Auf Dich in 3, 2, 1…” (in the style of ebay’s slogan but with the connotation of a German battle cry (“Auf Sie mit Gebrüll” – kinda like “Let’s get them”)).

I think it’s a good idea to protest against these measures of our government because, although they might help fighting terrorism, ultimately, they will neither stop terrorists nor protect from terroristic attacks. Moreover, the German police has enought rights and possibilities to fight terrorism efficiently – if they only could. But our police is overworked, underpayed and underequipped, which means they can’t make use of the rights they already have.

That is, in my opinion, the thing our federal government should do for protection: give the police the means to exert the legal possibilities they already have instead of giving them new legal possibities that just get rid of individual liberties.

A nice sentence from my newspaper (Süddeutsche) that nicely catched my opinion:

In einem Rechtsstaat kann die Polizei was sie darf. In einem Polizeistaat darf die Polizei was sie kann.

(In a constitutional state the police can do what they’re allowed to do. In a police state the police is allowed to do what it can do.)

I used leo.org for all the translations of the political terms. I hope they’re good enough.

*Überwachungsadler translates as “surveillance eagle”

**The Bundesadler is a symbol for the Federal Republic of Germany

More  and more people in Germany use a “Navigationsgerät” or short “Navi” (leo.org suggested “route guidance system”) in their cars. Yesterday Tanja had to travel to Trier on a business trip and the people she visited asked her whether she had such a  device in her car. Now, we don’t have such a device, but we have pretty good road maps in our car and as we usually travel together (one driving the other reading the map) we are able to find almost any place anywhere. But I assume that the map-reading abilities of the average citizen will soon begin to deteriorate because it is not necessary anymore to read maps (the advent of web-based route planners also helps to avoid map-reading). Soon the electronic route guidance system will not be an extravagant luxury tool but a necessity because it will have replaced the before necessary navigation skills of car-drivers.

Now think  for a moment: isn’t that the way progress works always? The advent of a new product opens new possibilities to the few owners who can afford the expensive product. But as it becomes more and more commonplace to own the product it gradually will be used more and more. Finally, it becomes a necessity – the people who don’t own it seem to be old-fashioned.

Take the refrigerator. A hundred years ago housewifes were able to preserve many many things with many many tricks – salting, pickling, sugaring, whatever, you name it. With the advent of  the refrigerator a certain luxury entered the homes – it was much easier to provide fresh things and keep them fresh. At the same time other things were not so much in need any more, e.g. the daily delivery of fresh milk. Then, after some decades, every household was equipped with a fridge, the milkman obsolete and the preserving skills vanished , it seemed impossible to survive without a fridge and indeed, by now it IS impossible to survive in our culture without a fridge.

With the car it is similar. First the mobility was extravagance, then it was good to have one because the possiblity of being mobile opened up new job opportunities and now the person without a car is so disadvantaged in the hunt for a job that they won’t get one at all.

The most recent example is the mobile phone. The mobile phone is right on the way to become a necessity without which life won’t work. Thinking about the skills that vanished with its appearance, the ability to arrange meetings and meeting points, the possibility to have someone  called out (“Herr Müller bitte zur Information an der Domseite, sie werden erwartet!”) come to my mind.

As an exercise you can consider the following: television, personal computers, the internet (hint: how to use a dictionary, an encyclopedia and the telephone register), washing machines, dishwashers, pocket calculators…

Do I think progress is bad? No, not at all. Deep in my heart I’m an engineer and I enjoy many of the possibilities that come with new products. (Am I not using the web RIGHT NOW?) I just want to show you the point-of-view of the pessimistic, grumpy German who sees a downside to everything. And, as an add-on, maybe I can make you aware that one should probably think about some exit strategies and maintain some skills – who knows when the new product might fail us? Very likely when we need it most. Even if it’s as stupid a thing as a low battery.

Well, it is now approximately two years since I started blogging. I have no idea whatsoever, how many words I might have written, nor how much effort I put into it, but it was fun. This blog even helps me to remember things that happened a long time ago. So it was worthwile. With about 500 hits in the most successful month this blog attracts as many traffic as other phony blogs in a day, but I assume that the people who read this are actually really interested in what I have to say. And I don’t see the necessity of attracting as much traffic as possible and, honestly, I can live without all the world knowing what I’m up to. And I don’t really feel attracted by the idea of trolls using the comments option…

A great thanks to my faithful readers!