it is simply amazing: the weather-gods continue to brighten up our boring lives with fantastic weather with non-stop sunshine and temperatures never had for the past 17 years. yesterday, my parents came back from germany’s 17th federal state, mallorca. and that means, that i could exit slavery of a thirsty garden and naughty dachshund today. actually, i had quite some plans for the 2 weeks at home, but as a matter of fact, i did not do anything at all besides my duties at home and some relaxing moments around mine or ren?’s bbq or a quiet biergarten-session. now, i begin to wish for a day of rain, just one day, to cool down the earth, clean the air from ozone and dust, and offer us a few hours to really breath through and catch some good sleep after 10 days of just rolling around in the bed all night long. however, i read somewhere in a paper, that these temperatures cause an interesting effect: germany behaves much more mediterranean! i strongly hope for some summer-activists to come and spread the word: no stress! — meanwhile, i have received mail from bamberg, including a confirmation for my room. i know nothing execept for the date i will be handed over the key, which happens to be 1st of september already. well, the room in maastricht, full of my belongings and has not been touched yet at all, because i hoped that alice would move in for the semester to write her thesis but won’t now since she found herself an internship at t-com – given all this, i must say i am surprisingly relaxed sitting here at my parent’s place. so, next week i am going back to maastricht to fill the boxes i will take to my parents‘ place and try to find some nice guy or gal (reliable, not a member of the „spassgesellschaft“) willing to move into my room for sublet. usually, it shouldn’t be any problem at all to find someone at this point in time, but honestly, i would rather like to have someone i know in there with my furniture and stuff. but we will see. contact me if you have someone in mind or are interested yourself. — soon, i will be going to the ulmtalsperre together with thomas and catch some sun and take a dip in the (hopefully) cool water. smell you later!

okok, i was very lazy these days. of course i am back in one piece and yes, we took many photos, and yes again, we are working on our travel report as well as the galleries. just to give you the bare bottom-line: it was magnificent! btw, it would be smart to check traumdieb.comas well once in a while, since this is my upcoming movabletype-blog, which will replace this one here as soon as i find time and inspiration to get the design ready and work out a solution for my new site concept in the respective templates. — merely at home, i bought a new radio for my car. it’s a jvc kd-lh7r (which does not tell you anything i believe, right?) and this beautiful machine is capable of mp3. damn, why didn’t i switch to that earlier? for the first time now, it makes really sense to burn my stuff on a mp3-cd, resulting in 4 and more hours of music with just one cd. — these days, i basically get up very early to sweep filou’s piss and kick his butt to continue outside. you know, this damn dachshund is becoming more psychotic every year, but hell, i simply love him too much to be really angry with him. ok, i shout and yell at him just to let him know that i am not accord with his demonstration-riot-or-whatever-else acts, but hey, my parents have started that laissez-faire thing too long ago that i could stard reversing it during the 2 weeks in summer where i am in charge of the house. but maybe it’s simply filou’s way to express his sympathy to me; let’s therefore call it the daily „warm“ welcome. — keep your eyes closed, for the sun is shining way too brightly.

dear home-stayers, during the next two weeks i won’t be blogging anything at all! why? -well, i will be spending zero thoughts on the internet, my blog, emails, downloads, news and so on, but rather enjoy the manifold joys of life on the gorgeous greek island crete. no worries, just sandy beach, sea, and sun! damn, i am really looking forward to it! kai and ramona are also there, but have chosen for crete’s „ballermann“ or lloret de mar, so to say. i am curious how they like it there, so far i have only understood that it’s needless to bring more than one pullover or long pants, since it’s truely hot there, somewhat around 40 degrees celsius. whatever… my suitcase is almost packed, and guess what, it’s a real lightweight as opposed to my trip to dublin, not to mention alice’s suitcase when she came back from ireland… — it’s my father’s birthday today. normally, we would have fruit-pies or cakes for teatime with the family, but he has conferences all afternoon. so we will only be having an extraordinary lunch together before i start my next travel-adventure: for the first time, i will not be using my car to drive to krefeld, nor use regulary train service of the deutsche bahn, no, this time i will be using the rostock-cologne line from interconnex. they are operating only twice a day, so cologne-rostock and back, but they are ultra-cheap. especially when you are younger than 26, because you get a 30% reduction on their rediculous prices. well, rediculous, big word; but i will save 11 euros for the same route and just spend 20 minutes in cologne’s main station because i have to switch to a regular train taking me to krefeld. although prices are comparable to using the car, a travel time of 3.5 hours is still a lot, if you can do it in 1 hour 50 minutes by car, given your right foot is really heavy that day and the motorways are empty enough ;). — of course we will take pictures, pictures, and pictures. we are equipped with my s30 and alice’s ixus 330, which makes a pretty promising duett together with a total of 512 mb flash memory and 4 batteries. now, be calm and DO envy us, but don’t expect emails, blogs, or pictures before july 18. cherete!

the latest issue of our faculty’s newspaper eloquent brought light into the dark! finally, now i know what my thesis topic will be: „what are the logistical implications if planet earth gets blown up by hostile aliens?“ -sounds strange? no, come on! we have a seriuos and well-defined problem statement, a whole bunch of corresponding sub-questions and hypotheses are imaginable, and it will truly be a work of academic importance, simply due to the fact that ‚little research has been carried out in this field‘. and actually, this is the only problem that will arise: literature research will not be an option, given the fact that at our faculty famous sci-fi epics are not regarded academic literature. i just wonder how you would carry out your empirical research. mail questionnaires to outer space? well, the response rate would surely be lower than what is regarded as statistically significant. but there’s a workaround: simply form a hypothesis questioning that there will be any impact in the first place, which can safely be rejected because of the lack of proof for probability of human-alien contact. nonono, this whole thesis bla-bla is really driving me nuts. why not stress this absurd sci-fi scenario in a proper manner and win eloquent’s creativity award, if other people are allowed to write about daddy’s mid-size enterprise’s internationalization efforts on the lofoten, or about the importance of strategic sourcing for the inbound logistic compartement for training suits of their favorite soccer club, or why miss sixty shops on the grote straat in maastricht are worse-off than in rotterdam, ororororor… grrrr! — i have overcome the gordic knot: movabletype is up and running! if you are interested, you can follow my advances here. but no laughs, it is not looking good at all, and i am also still not ready with my template. but, i will postpone all the cosmetics until after my vacation. — wer zur h?lle braucht eigentlich die biographie von schnullerbacke alex superstar? was hat der piemel denn schon gro?es zu erz?hlen? -da fand ich dieters buch literarisch wertvoll dagegen, wenigstens konnte man da mal richtig herzlich ablachen! und dann effe. b?cher, die die welt nicht braucht! und jetzt dieser heini, der die nation mit den erlebnissen aus 19 jahren misgl?ckter kindheit langweilen will. zum gl?ck ein echtes sammlerst?ck, was wohl auch nur sammler wollen werden. der k?belb?ck dagegen schie?t gleich richtig scharf: er hat seinen achselschwei? w?hrend der ganzen DSDS-zeit gesammelt und in kleine fl?schchen gef?llt. jo, und das zeug verkauft er jetzt als parfum. nagut, wann’s schee mocht…

the only excuse for not blogging for so long is the weather and all the activities related to it. however, i have made several attempts in the past days to blog, but somehow i could not get the animated gif i wanted to share with the audience to an acceptable filesize (yes, there are still visitors using dial-up…), which was driving me crazy. now you guys wonder what the planned content was, and i will not fail to report my sheer exitement about a stunning afternoon at krefeld’s horse-racing circuit. don’t get me wrong, i still like horses best when smoked, sliced and on my sandwich -or at least from a secure distance-; but seeing these powerful animals flexing their muscles as they race for victory with sharp eyes and flying hair is truly an impressive scene. although we pretended to inspect the horses before the race (mainly by imitating the viewes and analytical talk the people next to us held), we didn’t place any bets. that was due to the fact that of the three horses i judged as either ‚cripple‘, ‚tired‘ or ‚weak‘, two were among the top three and the other ranked fifth. so, when it comes to judging horses, next time i stick to my taste ;) — back home in hessen we had high-percentage sit-ins with my cousin (i haven’t seen her for at least 5 years) and my uncle. the next day, we made the first big move in my grandma’s house. my father had arranged for a huge van we filled up with equally old and heavy furniture, which was supposed to be my sister’s and my stake of the heritage. dividing up heritage-stuff in an empty house is a pretty shitty thing for all being involved, i can tell you. — today, alice and i booked our rental car for our holidays in crete. after having checked several rental companies, we were left with holiday autos and sunny cars, both offering almost the same price and conditions. as we found, it’s of crucial importance to select a rental company offering unlimited insurance coverage, especially referring to our irish outback action when we were lucky to have the extra insurance waiver. i just hope that everything works out as planned, since i tried to change our flights today. i must say, i was a little surprised when i checked the travel voucher with the tickets and all, as i had to find the flight’s duration to be almost 5 hours! gee, in five hours you can almost get to jo-burg. now, since we booked a direct flight from d?sseldorf earliest in the morning, i had to find that our flight stops at frankfurt, meaning that i could have boarded in frankfurt at a way more pleasant time due to an unmentioned change in the flight schedule. now, i am very curious how the travel-agency will handle my complaint and whether the airline is able and willing to change the booking to, all other variables being equal, frankfurt. — since my last blog, i have made a step towards movabletype: i bought webspace with all-inkl.com! so, i will surprise the interested visitor on www.traumdieb.com (which is still empty as i am writing this) with my first tryouts in mt shortly. i haven’t made up my mind yet how i will go on with this domain here, but my blog will definitely move to traumdieb.com. i am simply too much pissed by blogger and haloscan. new designs are already in the pipeline, but need thematic round-up, so to say. also, my photopages will have some decent rennovation (and an update, of course) as soon as i get accquainted with php and sql. besides, for those being interested in the dialect of my home village, i have put lots of work into mein-burgsolms.de lately, so check it out if you like. stay awake!

it is still above the 20 degrees outside, and here in my room surely above the 28… not that i don’t worship summerly warm weather and all the nice things that come along with that, but what i did today was definitely not meant for a hot day: i did real 3-country-shopping! wonder what that is? essentially, it’s using the best of „the three worlds“ the euregio has to offer. first, i went to the market in maastricht to buy fresh asperges, then i stepped into the car. almost well-done i arrived in aachen and bought decent beer and shopped for a fortune at aldi’s. on the way back, i turned into „hit“ for the few things aldi will never ever sell. back in maastricht, i emptied the boot and got a towel for my soaked car seat, since my 5-level aircondition (4 windows and 1 sunroof) didn’t manage to keep the temperature inside close to a bearable level. now comes the third country: belgium. belgium is always worth a visit, at least for fuel. so that’s what i did there, plus i bought some 20 liters of sparkling water for the weekend. should it continue to be that hot, i am sure i will make up for all the days i did not drink 2 liters. anyways, as if this hadn’t been enough, thereafter i went to ‚my aldi‘ downstairs to get the very last things i was still missing. now, before you declare me a moron, what my father actually did today when i told him, i am pretty sure that i made optimal use of the european economy’s freedoms and possibilities. besides that, i really had to fill the fridge because alice is coming home tomorrow, no, acutally today. that means, that i will be going to charleroi for the last time to pick her up! i am really looking forward to welcoming her here again. 9 months can be a damn long time on the last meters…

my cd-changer in my car is broken! you have no idea how mad i got this weekend, having to travel 550 km without decent music! it is always amazing how aggressive you get when having to listen to permanent bullshit on the regular stations‘ broadcast. i wonder whether all these shrinks and psychotherapists have ever taken into account that somebody having gone on a rampage could have been influenced in a very negative way by simply ultra-bad broadcast music?! who wouldn’t think of a blood-spilling axe-murder after alexander, daniel k?belb?ck, 50cent, ivonne catterfeld, mandy and randy, gareth gates, oli p, and blue, just to name the greatest vacuities in terms of taste, talent, musical manner and intelligence. -i think i drifted away a little… anyways, the stupid machine is broken. and as so often in life, you only worship things when they are gone. lucky though, that there is ebay, where at least material things can be reacquired… — this week, my mission besides starting my thesis will be keeping my fingers crossed for alice, since she has the probably worst week of her academic career: it’s exam week at trinity, and she got so unlucky to have one exam today, 2 on wednesday and one on thursday. i certainly do not envy her! but i am sure she will make it – maybe not to her own satisfaction (stakes are always high, ye know?!) – but still: a pass is a pass, right?

this is the 5th attempt within 24 hours to post something! it really drives me nuts to see what you can’t see right now, which are the the completely screwed up posts from the last weeks. i can’t wait to finally buy my allinkl.com webspace to get ready for movabletype. man, i hate when things i rely on do not work! — yesterday, i got reloaded – matrically reloaded, if you know what i mean. although i have read some pretty bad criticism and reviews, jan, alex and me went to see the movie anyways. well, now i think i should write something like a personal opinion on the matrix reloaded. oddly enough, i seem to not have a clear opinion! of course, the movie has its strong sides, no doubt. it is absolutely amazing how today’s special effects add value to a movie. but on the other hand, i believe that one should not compensate bad storyboard with special effects solely. without question, the cast is phantastic and well suited (the ladies may forgive me, but monica belluci and carrie-anne moss simply rock!). nevertheless, for all the girls out there favouring neo: man, look at him! this preacher’s coat and the ugly sunglasses look absolutely gay! anyways, regarding the plot i would say that the original fascination of the matrix-story and philosophy is completely gone in this movie, but rather, it is trying to carry the story further. i am not sure whether this succeeded in any way, since i did not completely get the story this time. what is absolutely certain, is the accumulation and consolidation of episodes from other action-packed cineastic events. we clearly identified „inspiring input“ from blade I, starwars, superman, spiderman, speed and leon. now, all fine, but as neo raises his arm with his fist upfront to fly through the skies, you really wanna puke. nevertheless, all in all, it is a good movie to be watched in theatre – you will have a good time during the 150 minutes. especially, when paying only 5 euro on cinema day! whether you actually go see it or not, make sure you watch the gaytrix. — the weather really pisses me off! it has been raining, stormy or simply shitty outside for days! right now, it looks as if this will never end. doom’s day. people, i really hate getting depressed by weather. sure, this kind of weather is perfect for working on a thesis, but absolutely counterproductive when starting one, since you need to have at least a positive attitude when thinking of spending hours and hours behind your desk and getting rectangled eyes. but what do i do instead? -play postal 2! i couldn’t believe it would actually run on my antique machine, but it does! gee, this is a game just right for the mood i am into! „it’s not guns that kill people, it’s me“ – i know, politically incorrect to the max, but hey, i still know what the difference between my left mouse-button and a real trigger is, alright? that’s what counts. these morons shooting people in schools or public places haven’t played too many of these games, but rather have access to weapons, that’s the problem. put away all private firearms and the problem is solved…

yesterday, i returned home braindead, exhausted and tired from a 3-day logistics career seminar in duisburg i attended together with jan. it was organized by and therefore took place at the locale of the kcl. the whole event was totally for free (including free lunch *lol*) since it was sponsored by the european union and the ihk duisburg. during the first two days, we had workshops with trainers from myLog consult. the workshops were held according to the method of richard nelson bolles, known as the author of the world’s best selling career planning book „what color is your parachute“ (or the german version here). normally, you would feel a certain resistance against those ever-returning „chaka“ and „wow, i can do it“ career-motivation things, but not so with this workshop. remarkably, i was able to really drag value out of it. no value i could share with you here, it’s rather intrinsic, tacit value just for me. sounds stupid, i know. anyways, we were forced to think about ourselves, make notes and go through worksheets to get to know our talents, abilities, personality and ideal-job prerequisites better. now, isn’t that something? the number one reason for job dissatisfaction and frustration is that most people aren’t even aware of the simple fact that they are obviously doing the completely wrong thing! and should i forget everything else from these two days, i will at least try to keep this in mind… at the end of day two, we made a very cool roundtrip in the port of duisburg. what many people don’t know is that duisburg is in fact europe’s biggest inland port. therefore, we really enjoyed this experience on the ‚ms lehnkering‘, a former sightseeing ship, now used by the vtg lehnkering to carry nosy students around for free. after two hours of information overkill, we went to the k?ppersm?hle for dinner, which turned out to be another highlight of this seminar. needless to mention how quickly a 3-course buffet shrinks when a herd of starving students is involved. the day ended at 23:30 due to a stupid busdriver. on the last day, we jumped into mr. boss, tied mr. joop, slipped into the lloyd twins and went to see the 18 (!) companies at the fare. to sum it up: the economy is shit, therefore you gotta be top of the pops to get a job. besides that insight, we had nice talks with some of the companies about a thesis, and had our cv checked. all in all, also the last day turned out to be a quite positive experience. probably jan wouldn’t agree so much, for he got slapped in the face twice and i only once, but hey, this was only a first meeting-up with representatives of the industry we might wanna go into. besides, didn’t we learn in statistics that you cannot draw conclusions from a sample that is too small to be considered representative? — gestern bekam ich eine der komischsten emails, die sich je in mein postfach verirrt hatte:

sorry, bitte was geht? was laufen da drau?ern denn f?r leute frei rum? -also entweder ist das die abgefahrenste spam-aktion, die ich je erlebt habe, oder aber ich wei? nun endlich, warum wir in deutschland so viele arbeitslose haben: da sitzt diese arme judith k. aus t. nun den ganzen tag vor dem sozialhilfe-gesponsorten telefon und wartet auf den startschu? zum waffelbacken, und zwar nur, weil der umsch?ler, der beim arbeitsamt eine abm-stelle hat, zu bl?d ist, die email-adresse eines arbeitsplatz-schaffers (also eines arbeitgebers im w?rtlichen sinne) richtig aufzuschreiben! ist das bitter?

back in maastricht again. i got a grip and went jogging for the second time since…. well…. probably a decade. jan estimates the distance to be roughly 6-7 km, so i am quite proud of myself. despite „fett-r?llchen“ and smoker’s lungs i managed to push myself over this distance with only 3 short breaks in between. actually, i felt like in a cheap, discontinued american soap when „come on“ing myself. — our blind passenger is gone. formally, at least. since she never got the letter the bailiff left her, big men came to throw all her furniture and havings out of her room and changed the lock. byebye miss sophie! only stupid that this bitch still owes nina and me some money… we were told that our new housemate is supposed to be a 4th-year law student, probably dutch. wow. i am amazed. but no grievance, anything is better than a virtual housemate, right? so we will try to give him a more or less warm welcome when he arrives. i still can’t get over the mess she left behind in her room. i had a nice chat with the maintenance man who had the disgusting task to clean up here and there and therefore a chance to sneak in her room – i simply don’t understand these homewreckers. — today, i received an email from jennifer, a lady from california, who asked me in perfect german why i wouldn’t blog in german, since there are so few german blogs out there. well, i explained to her, that germany simply is in no way a popular ground for blogging (yet), and that i found the english language to be a really connective tool, bridging nations. besides, as the large number of trans-continental visitors proves, english seems to overcome babel. especially for jennifer, i will switch to german for the rest of today’s entry, since i won’t find proper words in english for the latest scandal anyways. — vielleicht hatte ich es schonmal hier angesprochen, ansonsten wissen jedenfalls diejenigen, denen ich neulich meine neue deutsche mobil-nummer geschickt habe, da? da so ein bi?chen was verkehrt gelaufen ist, um es vorsichtig auszudr?cken. stand der dinge heute ist, da? meine alte nummer wieder geschaltet ist – und ich bin v?llig ausgeflippt, als ich das merkte, weil mich keine sau mehr unter meiner neuen nummer erreichen konnte. den pappnasen von o2 hab ich am telefon echt den h?rer hei?geredet, call-center agent gegen call-center agent ist echt immer spannend – aber ich hab die sowas von in grund und boden geargumentiert, es war schon fast eine wahre freude. jedenfalls kam am ende raus, da? sich e-plus aufgrund meines -na, sagen wir mal- sehr unmi?verst?ndlichen briefes gen?tigt sah, die ganze angelegenheit mit der mi?gl?ckten nummernportierung v?llig unkompliziert, unb?rokratisch und vor allem kostenlos zu l?sen. „seien sie sich sicher, da? die von ihnen erlebten ereignisse nicht den qualit?tsanforderungen der e-plus service gmbh entsprechen. wir entschuldigen uns hiermit und bla bla bla“. na bitte: GEHT DOCH! mensch, was k?nnte ich mich dauernd ?ber diesen schei? ur-deutschen stursinn und den daraus resultierenden schwachsinn aufregen. fangen wir erst gar n?cht von der deutschen wirtschaft an, sonst platzt mir noch der hals! ungef?hr genauso, wenn ich diesen gnom vom we??en haus reden h?re. ich wei?, ich wei?, ich wollte weniger ?ber politik reden, aber bush ist nun wirklich der gr??te kotzbrocken der neuzeit. was bitte sollte denn diese mega-peinliche aktion auf dem flugzeugtr?ger? da landet der kerl publicity-tr?chtig mit einem jet. angeblich, weil er sich ein bild davon machen wollte, wie es ist. navy-officials sagen, da? die abraham lincoln zu weit von der k?ste lag, soda? da kein heli mehr hinkonnte…. l?cherlich! so ziemlich alles, was seit meinem letzten politischen post seitens der bush-regierung vom stapel gelassen wurde, erzeugte bei mir echt einen kr?ftigen brechreiz! diese „new world order“ ist zwar eine presse-phrase, aber sie geht mir dennoch komplett gegen den strich. ich oute mich auch in diesem zuge als bef?worter f?r ein starkes europa – mit allen konsequenzen. es kann einfach nicht angehen, da? der gr??te wirtschaftraum der welt vor den usa permanent den schwanz einzieht, und an der frankfurter b?rse sich alle wegen einem schlechten dow jones in die hose machen. das kann einfach nicht sein, es entbehrt jeglicher logik. mich w?rde sehr stark interessieren, wo wir alle heute st?nden, wenn dieser abgebrochene zwerg bush nicht pr?sident geworden w?re. eines ist jedenfalls klar: schaue ich mir heute 80er jahre endzeitfilme mit post-atomkrieg szenario an, so kann ich angesichts der ereignisse der letzten monate und derer, die sich zunehmend abzeichnen, nicht anders, als dies nicht blo? in der kategorie „hollywood“ abzutun. punkt. alles wird gut?