1. what is the one country on the planet that you would like to visit but have never been to? i guess that would be hobbiton. or, sweeping that lord of the rings-gewgaw aside for a second, it would be new-zealand. all green and peaceful, you know?! no honestly, since i got hands that can do work i would not hesitate to start a sheep farm down there, live without mobile and internet, having a look into a paper once a week just to not miss the moment the un invades the united states to disarm bush…. (no, i gotta stop this sarcasm!)
2. If you had to pick another country to be born and raised in besides your native one what one would it be? let’s stay in europe for this: as a visionary, believing european, there are nice countries around germany. i wouldn’t wanna choose austria and switzerland, except for skiing and the mountains in general. france and holland are nice for holidays and their typical products. hmm, belgium, where would i need that for? crossing the channel at oostende? or the fact, that they aligned with germany and france in the un? denmark doesn’t make too much sense either, but people like it for holidays aswell, although you cannot pay with the euro up there and alkohol is too expensive. alice comes from poland, so better no bad words about it, but they sell cigarettes and alcohol very cheap. leaves us with the czech republic. no clue. probably do a lot of fdi there and in poland, which could pay off bigtime in the future. so i rather go for replacing helgoland with hawaii, deport the garden dwarfs and the musikantenstadel, and germany is fine for me.
3. What country actually really scares the hell out of you? there is a country far away, with an evil man as the head of state. a man, not elected by the country’s people. this country doesn’t have a health insurance for everybody, but rather tons of guns and too many weapons of mass destruction. many of the country’s people carry a gun every day, because the street murder quota is in the world’s top ten. the evil man’s actions are religiously motivated, because he believes his nation is appointed by god himself for saving the world by being the world’s greatest country……….
Bonus Question for comments: What do you think is the sexiest accent known to human kind? speaking of women, almost every accent is sexy, isn’t it? (except for women having a german accent when speaking english…) just think of the beer commercial „lieb?r arald, kaanst du mir nischt etwas von d?r sch?cken?“ -fantastic! i also do like gaelic, since it sounds like elvish, just for being returned at the lotr…

i found these questions via mitch on the page of 8bit joystick and thought it would be fun to answer them and of course spread them further. so go ahead and copy to post your answers as well in your own blog.

monday i came back from Ireland. our 500-miles trip with the rental car was just great. alice and i have written a report for the interested visitor. it somewhat summarizes our endeavours and the oddities we witnessed in those 3 days in the irish outback. — after my plane landed in frankfurt, i was once more amazed by all what has changed after osama: before queuing at the desks, your luggage is scanned for the first time and sealed with a bundesgrenzschutz tape. you cannot walk inside the airport for more than 2 minutes without coming across bundesgrenzschutz-people with bulletproof-vests and uzis. at the gates the hand-luggage is scanned and in some cases carefully examined (i am so glad for not looking like a muslim or even being a non-eu citizen). but even the average eu taxpayer gets a decent body check as i had to learn. ireland’s shannon airport became the target of two attacks. one should know that the us army moves a large part of their airforce through shannon to the gulf. the only result of these attacks is some sort of extra work for the irish army for they have moved tanks and a lot of soldiers to the airport area in order to provide security for the foreign subsidiaries of the greatest of all countries… while i was over in ireland, huge demonstrations against war took place, attrackting the masses. and indeed, it is like constance said it, only the government seems to have a pro-war attitude. — i must applause for how schr?der behaves in this explosive situation! the world does not consist of american colonies (although this view is rather close-by, given the trails the us army has left over in many countries). germany is a souvereign country, having his own beliefs, interests and opinions when making decisions. donald and georgie, we are not vetoing together with belgium and france just to piss you off or to to „move nato into the deepest crisis of its history“. no, we simply do not want to participate in a rage, which is no longer motivated by the threat the iraq was said to be. rather, there is oil, hell, plenty of it, and they are muslims so lets bomb them. cool move, really. you cannot honestly expect the world to follow your propaganda. and be polite!! donald, do you think the talk you talk is fostering the events? watch your language! — i would love to post some news regarding my career if you want to say so, but i am still waiting for the take-off sign from daimlerchrysler for my internship-to-come. so you will have to be as patient as i am, looking forward to the things to come. however, there is the news regarding how my fall/winter will look like this year. i have applied for a place for study abroad and got a very foreign place at bamberg university ;) you might say „boring“, „germany“, „what about the us or asia“ – i tell you what: given the current situation, i do not envy shorty and mathieu for having to move to south-korea right now, with the radioactive rockets of the north in place. i also do not envy martin for going to ohio, since i feel such a deep antipathy for the us. so why not bamberg? it will be a foreign experience anyways, since i have never studied in germany before, and most important, bavaria is a foreign country… — i should also mention that our house configuration has changed again. nicky moved out to live 300 m down the road for the last 4 months of her time in maastricht. nina moved into nicky’s room and feels more comfortable with this squaremeter-upgrade. mila is the new housemate then. the house was a terrible mess after 3 movings, but we managed to get it more worth living in again than it used to be in the last year. now you may eat again from the floor ;) — that’s it for today – stay tuned!

greetings from the island! i had originally planned to fly over to dublin on friday. but after checking for flights with ryanair, i found that i had already waited for too long, since what i had to read there was everything else but ‚low fares‘. i finally chose for aer lingus, the other irish flag-carrier, since they were cheaper than ryanair and even flying from frankfurt/main. should they continue with their 40 euro flights for inner-european destinations, i would defininately prefer their service over ryanair. let’s be honest: we don’t wanna pay for a bad meal, but if plenty of coffee, tea or water, coming with sandwiches of acceptable taste and cookies are included, i DO appreaciate that! anyways, since the plane for friday was full already, i simply booked for thursday and decided not to tell alice about that. i started heavy and serious collaboration with constance, alice’s landlady, who then picked me up at the airport and took me home, where i found alice doing her laundry in the kitchen as i stepped in. well, she has reported that on her website as well, so i leave it to her telling how terribly surprised she was. — we met with ricarda (ex x-change from germany) and her 100% dubliner boyfriend gordon on the weekend as we went for the movies, but ended up behind guinness and cider, since everything of interest was sold out. gordon then took us to a totally amazing bar carrying a gaelic name i cannot reproduce here, but being pronounced „miss you“ – but then with dublin accent and spoken fast. make sure you go there once when in dublin! — yesterday we went to a gaelic football match. alice was faster than me presenting her report on her blog already yesterday night, so go there for details on frozen feet, hot tea and new impressions. — we have just received the reservation receipt from budget for our rental car which will take us around the island in the upcoming three days. we will leave for glendalough, kilkenny, the cliffs of moher, and finally galway. we will keep you posted after we are safely back in dublin, since bad weather is being forecasted :(. — have a look at the picture at the beginning of this entry. the people of ireland are currently demonstrating against the us troop movements since the shannon area is heavily involved. it seems like everybody is against bush, but the irish government doesn’t seem to listen to its people or voters i should better be saying. as constance puts it, „the bloody government is simply ass-kissing with these cowboys, obviously because of economic motives. nobody wants this war-thing here – but everybody’s ape-shitting because of this cowboy.“ – way too cool to listen to, i tell ye! — till next time folx, take a look at the photos alice has put up in the february album! take care!

originally, i planned not to blog until tomorrow when i will be back to maastricht and my flatrate, but today’s headlines simply hit it off! „germany is a problem“ was the paper saying, as usual in big, bold letters. this is a quote from us minister of defense, donald rumsfeld, expressing his upsetnes and anger about the franco-german ‚no‘ to a possible military attack on iraq. france and germany, as he explains, are representing the ‚old europe‘, but in his understanding, europe is not germany and france. well, we all know how well the americans learn geography, so applause for this fantastic analysis!
„war may never be considered unavoidable. … everything must be done to achieve the implementation of the (u.n.) resolution by peaceful means. that is the common position of france and germany and we will not be diverted from it“
-gerhard schr?der
in the course of the celebrations of the elysee-contract the two countries entered 40 years ago, which is also viewed as the beginning of the franco-german friendship and an era of true peace in europe for the first time in history, this monkey g.w. bush accuses france and germany, or generally speaking all the countries who are not with the us, of being on the side of the enemy. hello? what do these cowboys believe the world to be in the first place? an ever refreshing resource of allies in their madman’s run for world-leadership and the war against terror? a war, that started with a few thousand dead civilians and turned a symbol of national pride and invincibility into a junkyard. this, my valued readers, is no more a war against terrorism, this is the cowboy’s prestigeous world-tour with the title ‚world war 3′. i am so glad that we germans did not start it this time… but, since history tends to repeat itself, in the end it will be the german ‚no‘ being held responsible for all this. the americans should bang one thing into their heads: germany is not a protectorate of the us! being a part of a united and peaceful europe, germany should stand up against big brother america if it believes to have good reason to do so. this, mr rumsfeld, is not a problem. rather, it is a move towards peace, away from military aggression. besides, what kind of arrogance is it to believe that if the us blow the horn everybody will follow suit? georgie and donald, get it: we don’t want to make your war, we don’t want to spoon out the badly tasting bouillon you are cooking all over the world. maybe the comparison with a german, acutally austrian, who was popular 6 decades ago, wasn’t that misplaced as always said. but if you can’t stop it, go ahead. go for a second waterloo, for a second stalingrad, for a second vietnam! keep on intruding in the affairs of others, impose the ‚right‘ behavior on other nations, keep killing and sacrficing people, but never forget to tell everybody what a great nation you are! —
„if it can’t be solved peacefully and if the u.n. should fail to act — and i hope that is not the case – then the united states reserves the right to do what it thinks is appropriate to defend its interests, the interests of its friends and to protect the world. and I am quite confident if it comes to that we will be joined by many nations.“
-colin powell, us secretary of state

change of place: the netherlands have elected a new cabinet, kicking out many of the right-wing populists, making the social democrates the true winner of the show. the christ-democrates, who have won the elections, now have the difficult task to form a new government. unlike in germany, the dutch votes are more widespread across the different parties. as a result, three main players have to come up with a solution. really a dilemma, since one can’t do without the other(s), requiring talks, negotiations, and compromise and mutual concessions. but i view it as true democracy. — germany’s scandal of the week were the proposals for a complete restructuring of the german federal system. different proposals exist, the most extreme claiming the reduction from currently 16 to 9 federal states (l?nder). in my point of view, they should do it – ten fortunes could be saved on adminstrative expenses. besides, ‚l?nderpolitik‘ seems to be reduced to the educative system and employment. this at least are the only two things you read regarding the upcoming elections. plus, integrating the city-states berlin, hamburg, and bremen into the state surrounding them is pure logic. go for it! — yesterday, i received two negative responses for the applications for internships, but i still have the appointment with mercedes in utrecht next week and i am looking forward to it. i keep you informed if a room in maastricht is free for sub-rent in the very near future ;)

as i read my online-newspaper today, one headline popped into my eyes: „gouverneur von illinois hebt alle todesurteile auf“. well, i did not bother too much with the rest of the german article, i moved on to cnn.com. of course, since this outgoing gouverneur is a republican, this was not an issue regarded suitable for the frontpage. instead, cnn was happily presenting the new architectural designs for ground zero. having navigated across multiple pages where i was offered to get the breaking news by email and thereby being among the first to witness the „showdown“ -all this in a fancy box showing georgie and saddam- and still i could avoid puking, i finally arrived at the same message in the law section. here’s the quote of outgoing gouverneur george h. ryan:
„Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error: error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die. What effect was race having? What effect was poverty having? Because of all these reasons, today I am commuting the sentences of all death row inmates.“
wow, this man earned my respect and country-points! would only some more leading people in the US have the guts and stand up…. —- the us-army is heavily moving men and machine down to the gulf, preparing for warfare. saddam’s army, on the contrast, weighs almost a million men, plus countless fanatic schoolkids, mothers and grandpas who will not hesitate to grab a gun when they can get one. the more serious the US get with their world tour, the more building sites of warfare they open, the more i start thinking about my second career in the hills of new zealand. honestly, now with north-korea and their nuclear weapons programs, i feel more like going to hobbiton than anywhere else. — my personal terrorist attack was the results of my finance-class. once more, i did not pass. the only consolation is the average grade of 5.2 and the enormous amount of people not having passed as well. i really start doubting that i will ever pass this stupid course, where no aspect of finance is dealt with thoroughly but on a rather superficial level, but where one is expected to be an expert of international finance, management and financial accounting in the end. once again: stupid! — as the interested visitor might already have noticed, i am building the other pages as well – one after another. ‚about‘ and ‚faq‘ is ready, and i expect to be done with the rest more or less by the end of this week. so, as always, stay tuned and have a nice week wherever you are on this bad planet.

after weeks of playing around with colors and setups, i finally managed to upload my new frontpage. i hope you like the refreshment – and to all of you often complaining that i never wear or use colors: i made this side in blue for you! coders would want to take a look at the source, for it took me ages to realize all that without graphics, rollovers, and table coloring, just pure html, css and js. — actually, i had a nice long blog just finished, in which i extensively thanked you all for your birthday greetings, apologized for not answering your ordinary, christmas or new-year’s emails just due to pre-christmas stress, peri-christmas internet- and computer abstinence, and post-christmas lack of preciousssss time not to be wasted behind a computer, and of course slow isdn-connectivity. but: my pc froze totally before i could post what i had just written. too bad that i could not recover it, for i had reported everything exiting from my winter holidays, including a comprehensive comment on the second part of the lord of the rings, meaning aragon, sagrotan, legoland, sagesmir, holmirbier, frodo „flennbacke“ baggins and of course gollum whith which alice almost fell in love with. i also wrote a line on my birthday sit-in with alice, kilian, linda, christoph, ben, antje and alex in the take5, the nice presents i got this year, why and how alice had too much drinks in the zentralbar in giessen with thomas and kai, a totally wasted first day of this year after a phat new year’s party at lena’s place and way too much drinks, our visit to the laboratories of krefeld’s sewage and garbage site where alice’s mom works as a biologist and made this sneak possible. — on the 1st of january, kilian took off to singapore and you can read about his adventures in his weblog. also alice left me, when heading back for dublin on the 4th. i for my part am back to maastricht since, working on my website, relaxing and preparing for a stupid resit in economics. i also got in contact with the people from bmw-motorsport where i applied for an internship. exited i am how this all turns out, since it will largely determine how my last year of studies will actually look like. i had a good talk with professor semeijn today about thesis and internship and all that, and i finally heard an educated opinion on my plans. so we’ll see what happens next. either way, it would be absolutely grand to get the bmw internship, since it must be a blast working for a racing department of an automobile manufacturer. ‚freude am fahren‘ in its very essence…. — i will close here for now. the navigation will be functional within the next day, as soon as all content pages are operational. you log – i blog. take care!

I am only 45% Internet Addict!!!

According to the test, I could go either way. Deep into the madness of nights filled with coding Scripts and online games, or I could become a normal user. Well, thanks a lot!

Take the Internet Addict Test at fuali.com

Hey you expats in Dubai, the Carribbean, California and Australia! Guess what?! -It started snowing, and the temperature here is 1? C………

Loooooong time no blog… sorry for that. But what’s the use of blogging that I have nothing to blog, huh?! — Actually, I just want to drop another line here to indicate to you that I am still alive. Plagued by flu and cold, the usual suspects, but alive. Today I held my last presentation for the logistics course – probably the last presentation in Maastricht ever. Strange feeling… — Exiting, but also equally exhausting because incredibly stupid is the trouble we have in the house with one housemate I prefer to call „blind passenger“. On Monday, we had the bailiff in here. Actually, these people are really nice if they do not come for oneself. So I had a good chat with him about Mrs Debtfire, and he left her a letter. Not good, since Tom and I apparently are not the only ones she’s owing money. I am still curious if I will finally get it back. Since our in-house lawyer is not sure about the situation, we might need to outsource that part to check our chances… But since I am really not a fan of this kind of allotment-holder-like warfare, I find this whole story simply really sad. Especially, since I freed my mind on a piece of paper that actually made her cry, so I am the jerk again! I hate it when I consider feeling guilty about somebody else’s mess. But life is all about learning, right? It is always amazing how other people perceive reality and define words like responsibility, duties, rights, trust, understanding, and community. — Different story: Webnews. Kilian updated his design of his Skyzone with the rollout of version .5 – don’t miss that! I finished the monthly galleries in the photosection and started already with the rest, but I am not totally sure about the format. Besides, I am working on a design refresh aswell. The university was so nice to grant me access to PHP webspace again, so I will go on practicing and fooling around with that again. — Only a couple more days and Alice is coming home for Christmas holidays! I am really looking forward to that. During her stay, I promise, we will put up her picture galleries from Dublin as well. — I will be home for the weekend, since it was my mother’s birthday yesterday. I will also take a sneak into the almost finished appartment of Thomas and Kai to see whether all-male households work… — By the way, I wanted to drop a note on today’s terrorist attacks in Kenia: Should this constant and persitant tumbling of peace in the world increase over the next years, I have no problem breaking down my tents here and move to New Zealand, using my economic skills when I start growing sheep there. The good thing is, I can be sure Shorty will be my regular guest whenever he feels like snowboarding ;) — Stay tuna!

My valued visitors, life turns out to be extremely boring these days. I would not call it relaxed, since there is so much to do for university again, but I simply can’t manage to get my ass down on something productive. Horrible! I guess the only output I recently created are the 2 more galleries I added to the photo-section, and three more are about to come. So check ‚em out. — Apart from that, it seems that the christmas-season has really started and I did not fail to shop for the usual suspects: Marzipan, Lebkuchen, Pfeffern?sse and the like (I do not care about the English translations – should you be aware of them drop ‚em in the comments). Due to the weather, which is seldomly appealing, one has even less incentive to move outside, and instead rather hooking up oneself behind the computer, TV or whatever seems appropriate to enjoy what the christmas bakeries of the world have produced. If I do not watch out, I might get a belly ;). The next plausible reason not to move is the terrible pain in my back I caught while changing one of my car’s tyres. Sad enough, there was reason to do so: Once again, my car became the victim of a bored and envious kid of the neighborhood: Some mentally impaired ghetto-idiot put his knife in one tyre. Thanks a lot! I really begin to hate now, even feeling the slight effect of too many ego-shooters. I imagine myself out there with a minigun waiting for the next hair-gel-and-turned-basecap-idiot-on-a-bromfiets to appear, touching my car and receiving his well-earned load of rounds… Well, surely not the way to do it, but I can tell you shit like this really sucks! (I should watch my language…) — Enough of that crap, gotta go to university now. BTW, comments are always welcome!