Below are the 14 most recent journal entries recorded in Michael's LiveJournal:

Friday, July 27th, 2007
9:52 am	秋葉原　(Akihabara) If only been here for four weeks and already was twice in 秋葉原, a part of Tokyo known or almost exclusively for all kind of Electronics, Anime, Manga and Video Games. On 秋葉原駅 (Akihabara station) it is even referred to as the Electric Town. And that couldn't be more true. Imagine a whole city. Imagine electric stores you have seen in your life by now. Replace 90% of the cities houses with those stores and add above each store several other stores and do the same for underneath the earth and you might slowly get the idea. Of course there is also an inhabited area in Akihabra, but you need to walk really long in a straight line to find it ^^. The cool thing about 秋葉原 is that, beneath big electronic stores like the ones known from anywhere around Europe and America (though they carry other names) there are countless of small ones. Many of those are run by their owners themselves. Others offer repair services and not a few offer stuff they assembled themselves. Also you can find anything electronic there the world of humans has ever produced! Starting from some small old shops, which still sell vinyl player and ancient tube radios up to stores which exclusively offer the world's fastest processor, that happened to came out, just when I was last there. For the processor something between 100 - 500 people stood in lines in front of several stores, which started selling it by 10 pm. Then you can find passages, which are specialized in selling you raw material. Everything you need to build your own electric device from scratch for prices next to free. The same counts for computers. Since I was searching for a Laptop, I could have taken Laptop models between 1.000 Yen and 400.000 Yen (~ 7 Euro - 2800 Euro). Alas I have made a wrong decision, but more to that later. Also I found a store which sold self assembled Laptops, assembled mostly from parts of other Laptops, and sold them with Suse Linux. (I should have taken one of those...) Well and as I said the town is also about Computer Games. Every Game ever produced for a console and most PC/Computer Games can be found there for a very cheap price. Looking for a lesser known Game Boy Game? Searching the Neo Geo and Games for it? 　秋葉原 is definitely your place to go! But the same counts if you are interested in recent consoles and Games. Nowhere on Earth will you get them as cheap as here (e.g. Nintendo Wii new 20.000 Yen ~ 150 Euro, if you take the shop as Internet Provider it becomes 5.000 Yen ~ 38 Euro, if you accept second hand about 10.000 Yen ~ 75 Euro). Of course it is especially fun to just go and look through all the countless game shops. There are even shops specialized in "Retro Games". Anime/Manga Last but not least, 秋葉原 is the place in Tokyo for Anime and Manga. There are also countless stores for it, like the famous Square/Enix store or the Anime center with wonderful and cheap merchandising (I got myself an Ohmu for a keyring from Nausicaae) and of course Mangakissas (漫画喫茶）, that's a cafe where you sit between big shelves filled with Manga and are allowed to read as much as you can and as long as you want! There is, however, a downside to this. Young girls are forced to wear Maiden Cosplay to distribute flyers of shops and other stuff. But the worst are Maiden Cafes and Maiden Hostess Cafes. These are cafes where young girls in maiden cosplay serve you your drinks and are supposed to flirt with you and make you compliments and stuff. Its like prostitution without sex, and apparently many Japanese guys go to such Cafes and many Japanese girls agree into this soft prostitution, because they think they need designer bags, shoes and stuff like this. It's really sad. Well finally the second time I went there to spend my first salary for a Laptop. I found several promising models and was finally deciding between one of the above mentioned self assembling Linux store and a huge Second Hand store. Although the second store would not let me try my Linux Live CD with the Laptop to find out, what's really in it and although they would not grant me the right to return it within one week and were in general unfriendly (usually Japanese people are very polite and treat you as king/god when interested in buying something from their store) and although it contained a ATI card, I bought it :( and regret it now. The ATI card promising 320 MB of Video Memory in fact only borrows the memory from the RAM, which of course makes the concept vain. In fact the card is so bad, that you can't even run ordinary 3D games like Cube without dropping all graphic options to a minimum and forget about newer ones. It's not that I really need this, but for the money I spent, I would have liked to have it (100.000 Yen ~700 Euro). Since I have 3 years of warranty and a stupid Windows Vista with it and since it is all in Japanese, I thing about selling it on an auction page in Japan and going for the other store... Windows Vista Of course I used the second existing partition on the Laptop hard drive for Linux and use it ever since. However having the Chance to have one own's Windows Vista, I gave it a look. First thing I noticed it used up 25 GB of the Laptop hard drive. No further words to that. Second thing I noticed: Even when you only want to move a file from one place to another (without console) you are asked one time, if you want to move it, then the computer freezes and a Security Warning pops up that warns you that a file is being moved 0 a potential security risk - and if you confirm to this. This happens about anything you can possibly imagine doing on a windows os. Everything produces at least 2 pop ups and freezes and unfreezes the system for the warning, which takes some time. Of course you can find HowTos to switch that off, and HowTos to switch the consequences off (Red X in the right corner blinking and warning you of security risks, because you switched off the freezy warnings) etc. Wow, what a crap! Second. Since it came in Japanese, I wanted to try switching the language to English or smth. After a whole lot of search, I found out that to switch the language of your Windows Vista version, you need to pay almost the same amount of money you paid for the first one. And of course you have to pay that for any language you desire. Expect you go for the ultra universal super mega edition which costs like thrice or four times as much and actually allows you to switch languages! Wow. I don't want to speak of that Window's own CPU and RAM observation tool, tells you that if you move you mouse to fast on the screen or even move windows around, the CPU usage of the built in Celeron 3. smth (1.8 real Ghz) rises to near 100%. Well and to rob Windows of its last arguments, for Linux I tried this time Ubuntu, since a friend at work gave me a Live CD (for trying it in 秋葉原）. And the installation worked perfectly, afterwards even ATI card and Wifi card worked and all was very User friendly (too friendly for my taste, but you always have the option of using a console and see for yourself). What also was nice: If you want for example to open a movie file, Ubuntu offers to install any needed codec and lib and offers you a number of video players to choose one from - than installs everything and runs the movie in the player of your choice. The same counts for any filetype it can make out. Also if something does not work, it immediately offers a solution by installing further software or changing system settings and solved the problem for you. I was really impressed. No Windows OS I have ever seen is capable of amazing stuff like this, all Windows does is pop up a Help Window that is usually not related to the problem. So if you want to leave Windows and try something new and are a bit afraid of Linux or want to convince a friend to Linux, which has no trust in his capabilities or want to install a Linux for you parents, go for Ubuntu. It is really easier to handle than Windows, and they will love it =) Wishing you the best (and currently trying to figure out how to use a Japanese auctions page) your live reporter at the heat of action mika Current Mood: sad (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, July 16th, 2007
11:15 pm	金沢旅行 (Journey To Kanazawa) From July 13th to July 16th I went together with three interns and a japanese friend to the capital of the 石川県　(Ishikawa Prefecture) namely 金沢 (Kanazawa). July the 16th despite being a Monday bared no working obligations to us, since it was a national holiday. Do not ask which holiday, since even several (even old) natives could not answer that question. Cite old Japanese lady: "Oh my these holidays keep changing so fast, there's no way you can keep up with what they are for". ;) Nonetheless we took a night bus on Friday, the cheapest Japanese way of inter-prefecture traveling and arrived in 金沢　on Saturday. First we checked in our luggage, then we immediately began the 見物　(kenbutsu: Japanese word for exploring a city, ~sightseeing). What we have seen was: The Ninja Temple (忍び寺) In the midst of 石川's capital are many many temples, but this one struck us a especially interesting. The name was given to it only in recent times, formerly it was just the temple of whatever lord was in charge of the city. Though the name is apt, since it is spiked with traps, pitfalls, secret doors, secret passages and even secret floors. James Bond would had gotten envious had he lived in 17th century. For example there was a couple of stairs leading to the entrance, which appeared as ordinary white stairs from the outside. Yet you once we stood underneath the stairs, we suddenly realized they were made out of paper, since the sunlight shone through them and enlightened the room. Now if you are armed with poles or pikes you can easily make use of this fine trap. Also there was a well, which contains a hidden passage, according to legends leading directly to Kanazawa castle, but the passage is too old and dangerous now to find out... Well apart from that every second wardrobe contained a secret passage into another room, so that intruders should get the idea after finding one or two.... Kanazawa Castle (金沢城) Though not through the well hidden passage xD we went to the castle. It had fallen victim to a fire and was only rebuilt recently. Impressive though was that they used the ancient traditional way of crafting wood in a way, that it can not only hold structures like a huge castle, but also withstand earthquakes and the like. And all that without nails or other tools! This is the Japanese way of preserving history: Instead of preserving the structures, like Europeans do, Japanese rather preserve the ideas and rebuilt the structures every so often. Samurai District (侍区) The city has an old samurai district, which is still inhabited. Alas that is why, we could only look at the houses from the outside. An as you might imagine, the prosperous samurai build tall hedges around their property, as a kind of security and privacy matter. Geisha District (芸者区) Otherwise the geisha district was openly accessible, as it of course was built with this intent. No more geisha dwell there today, but the street and the houses are still marvelous. We also entered a museum like one and studied their instruments tools and the interior of the rooms of a geisha etablisement. Kenrokuen (兼六園) This huge garden is one of the most famous in whole Japan. Maybe that's why in spite of the rain many people were there. It would indeed be a quite place of inspiration and rest if it wasn't for all that people. The next day, Sunday, we went to the neighboring town of 加賀 (Kaga), which is more Japanese countryside and was accordingly much smaller and less crowded with tourists. City Festival (加賀祭) We were really lucky, because we ran into an annual festival were performers from all around Japan come to 加賀　and perform on the street. It was really impressive, look at the pictures! Onsen (温泉) Well we did not really find a real hot spring, but at least a somewhat special bath house in so far that it used sea water. Japanese bath houses you enter completely naked, then you clean yourself and enter a really hot bad. Ours had 42 degrees. Afterwards you shower cold. We were pretty burned afterwards and our skin was all red! The Sea (海) In 加賀　we went also to the sea side, watched the sea and climbed around rocks close to the water. It was really nice! Afterwards we went along the shore until we found 加賀s fishers' haven. Natadera (白山信仰の寺) This was probably the most beautiful thing, we've seen on our trip. It's a kind of huge temple areal in the nature of 加賀. The natural landscape is wonderful and the temples are built within the mountain / rocks. If you climb up you them having tunnels into the mountains and paths and bridges to the other temples. Alas we had only a couple of minutes until the last bus left, so we could not really enjoy this awesome place. But if you ever come to 金沢 or 加賀, be sure to visit it! Earthquake (地震) On Monday morning, when we wanted to take our bus back to Atsugi, a man informed us, that the bus won't come, nor any other bus or train, since the neighboring prefecture Niigata 新潟 was hit by a terrible earthquake, which destroyed streets and rails. So we were stuck unable to escape from 金沢. After much asking, we found out that they were hardly trying to fix at least the rails for the shinkansen 新幹線 the Japanese high velocity train. So even if it was really expensive, we decided to go back by shinkansen, which eventually left at 17:00 o'clock. 新幹線 apart from being quick and expensive are really comfortable and you don't really feel the high velocity. Thus ended my first real trip in Japan, which was hopefully not the last! Tune in again for more exciting adventure. Yours faithfully mikaちゃん Current Mood: ditzy (Comment on this)
Monday, July 3rd, 2006
4:56 pm	With Full Force XIII With Full Force XIII [June 30th - July 3rd] I spent these last 4 days on the WFF Festival near Leipzig, a great music festival from rock to metal and from punk to hardcore. It sure was a great experience, and I am glad that though I'm fed up with university work, I went anyway. In out first plans we intended to go by 4 people, but in the end only Martin, my room neighbor and I remained. We got our tickets without any problems, but apart from that we were rather unprepared: We were in lack of a tent and of a possibility to get to the festival. Train would have been an option, but it was on the one hand very expensive, and on the other hand there was a problem with the date of our departure. On the same day we intended to go (June 30th) there was a soccer match from this commercial soccer world thingy, where the team playing for the country I live in, played. The match was in Berlin and trains going to Berlin passed through Leipzig, so we would have had to deal with masses of crazy soccer fans, who have changed their brain in for beer and merchandising. I'm not sure If I would have survived that. (btw I hate football, commercialism, capitalism, stupid people (like most (not all) soccer fans), and nationalism. A comment to that: I can't find any positive thing ever having been created or been influenced by nationality; only hatred, racism, violence, intolerance and political manipulation. Maybe I am a bit unfair to the Soccer thing, cause it went pretty peaceful I think, but the upcoming nationality really worries me. Furthermore, though trying my best not to hear any news regarding the championship, I overheard something about no-go areas for certain ethnic groups... Anyway back to the festival. Luckily all our problems were solved by some great friends. Franzi, a girl we recently met in Erlangen, lent us a tent and Lukas, a great guy studying Japanese Studies with me and Theater and Media Science with Martin a second tent and his car. And what kind of car! The car's called M.S.Smoky, written in big letters on the front window. It is an old Mercedes Benz model (of course without the ugly star) coming in the colors (from bottom to top) grey - bright blue, bright pink and black. It has some major dents and looks all in all totally shabby. It has seen about 300.000 km with it's eyes. The inside is the very definition of chaos and messy. It has no handbrake and some of the displays on the dashboard are broken, but it comes with some nice interior equipment, e.g. blue curtains for every window, a flexible tube system ranging from a weed bong (built of some old cleaning bottle) to every seat and a disco ball behind the backseats. Last but not least it got a great dormer on the ceiling. But the best of all, in spite of it's condition, it's really smooth and nice to drive, fast enough, quiet and also economical in gasoline. We both really felt in love with this car, although I usually hate cars and the driving of the same. Alright being ready just in time we printed some drive-plan from mappy.com and started out journey. All the way to the festival Martin drove the car, while I assisted him as best as I could (not very good) and learned some japanese vocabulary on the highways. Except one single time towards the end and a little mistake at the beginning, we had no problems getting there. We parked M.S.Smoky at a meadow next to a forest close to the festival, got a shopping cart (The festival got a lot of them for the visitors ^^) put our stuff in and met up with Martin's friends. Alas we parked at the side of the festival that has the maximal per-foot distance to the place, where his friends put up their tents and since the stages where in the very center, it had also the maximal per-foot distance to these. After we reached the base camp we quickly stored our stuff in the tents of the others and made up back to the sage to see the first bands: Trivium: music +1 | charisma +0 Stone Sour: music +2 | charisma +2 *with charisma I also mean appearance, stage show etc. After Stone Sour we made back to the base camp and built up our tents. I got to know Martin's friends, as well as our neighbors, camping right next to us building a big circle together with out tents. After some camping dinner we hurried back to see Soulfly: Soulfly: music +4 | charisma +4 Napalm Death: music +3 | charisma +4 Mystic Circle music +0 | charisma +0 Although Soulfly now has many great songs of their own, they played some great Sepulutra songs like Roots Bloody Roots and Chaos A.D.. I think I've overdone it with Pogo and crowd surfing, but it was really awesome. And about Napalm Death, Barney surely knows how to rock! After Napalm Death, I stayed to watch Mystic Circle, cause I remembered having some songs of them, which were not that bad. Their act however was. I think they just came, played some songs and left again. They hardly spoke to the people and their songs were just boring. After that I went back and after a long way home (meeting and talking to random people) I fell into my "bed". Waking up pretty early I had a great breakfast and enjoyed the absolutely great weather. The other mourned about the hot sun, but since I have some messed up skin and body, I rarely sweat and don't experience "hot sun" that quickly. Disadvantage, I have to use some ultra sensitive sun blocker 60+ ^_^. So I read some comics and wrote a letter to my great pal Leslie, who's birthday was on the same day. After an absolutely relaxing morning we went to see the Metal Market and the first bands: A.O.K. music ? | charisma ? Those guys were totally insane! Two of them were completely naked all the time and instead of playing real songs, they rather made nonsense. Like one song power failure was just silence, but also other songs were rarely longer than 20 seconds. So what did they do for one hour? They threw 10 boxes full of salad into the crowd, took some baguettes wiped their asses and penises with them and also threw them into the crowd. What else did they throw into the crowd? -> A sex puppet, a wishing broom, their electrical guitar (one of the members could then of course not go on playing), the box of the guitar, sausages, ... And and and. I don't remember all. Apart from throwing they hopped around the stage playing with their penises and just made insane stuff. I was too fascinated to perceive the music, but the show was great. Subsequently I went back to the tents for some lunch, while some of the others stayed to watch Raunchy and the Haunted. Something else, alas I could not escape the soccer madness, as I hoped I would. Cause on the WFF, there also were hundreds of those soccer fans, wearing soccer merch. Additionally there were german flags everywhere and from everywhere you could hear people sing football songs instead of metal and punk songs. Even worse, there was a great screen broadcasting football somewhere and during the german match, even the small screen next to the stage showed soccer, so that a big part of the crowd could/did not watch Stone Sour and Trivium on Friday, but had their heads twisted to the left... After some convincing talk of Martin, and since his friends also fell into the soccer euphoria I agreed to show tolerance during the festival, cause by heart all the people here are good people and listen to the same music. You have to know that after I had been confronted several times with the soccer cup, I decided to play exaggerated intolerance against all this soccer stuff as a form of protest, though this intolerance is usually against my nature ;) While all of the others planned to see Obituary and most to go swimming afterward, I went to Toxoplasma before Obituary, then missed the others and stayed to watch some more bands. Toxoplasma was great, Wally played some great Punk Songs and with all the other left ticks, I really felt at home. Also screams from the audience like: "Germany must die" really warmed my heart. Afterward I went to see the rest of the Obituary show. (There were two separate stages). They were not bad either. Now having missed the others, I wanted nothing more than to walk back and drink. However not far on my way, I met out camp neighbor: "You can't go back, Clawfinger is now on stage! Thirst? I won't accept so petty excuses, come I buy you a coke!". Said and done, so I got my drink and we enjoyed Clawfinger. They played many of their cool popular songs like: "When I grow up, there will be a day, when everybody has to do what I SAY!" and "The bigger the best better than the rest!".I'm lucky that I did not miss them, however now I was really thirsty, but In Extremo were already coming up and as mentioned before the path to our camp was by foot 15-20 min. So what did I do? Yes I run! I run all the way, drank some big gulps ate two wholemeal cookies drank some more big gulps and run back. And I came just in time. I already saw In Extremo LIVE two times. I did not enjoy the latter one, because I had the feeling the went to far into the "Pop" direction with their recent CD and success. But there were really cool today and I think I must revise my previous opinion. Btw, it is great when yu can sing along most of the songs, a band plays ;) After In Extremo I met Martin_2 one of Martin's friends, who also watched In Extremo instead of swimming. We went back to the tents, now having enough time, since In Flames would not come up before 2 hours. Toxoplasma music +3 | charisma +4 Obituary music +2 | charisma +2 Clawfinger music +3 | charisma +3 In Extremo music +5 | charisma +4 After some lunch and more drinking we all (the swimmers were at the base camp) went back to see In Flames. They really rocked! They made incredible good music and had an awesome light and (of course) fire show. Anders is really a worthy front-man, he is cool, cute and he rocks. They also proved to be able to speak about sincere topics on a live act, when Anders spoke about the death of a friend. In Flames music +5 | charisma +5 Enough! This marathon really exhausted me and I sunk into my "bed", while the others drank some more beer and met. We went up a bit later, had some coffee and then decided to have a swim. Because one other cool thing about the WFF is that not far from it lies a big lake with blue water and a sand strand. It is really funny to see a huge strand occupied by people all wearing black stuff and/or having punkish haircuts ^_^. The water was very cold, but the more refreshing. We swam a bit, discovered a nice little island, left it again quickly in terror as our nosed and eyes discovered that many people used this island for having a shit and finally let the sun dry us again. It is really a great spot to escape from the burning sun and a great addition to the festival. The lake was closest to where we parked M.S.Smoky, so the way back took a while. Back there we enjoyed some lunch. I relaxed a bit longer in my tent while Martin went to see Mambo Kurt. What he told later, I really should not have missed that one. Nonetheless I was looking forward to another act. Yesterday while we were waiting for In Flames to play, they announced on the screen next to the stage, that instead of Hundred Reasons, ZSK is coming up on Sunday. ZSK is a skatepunk band from Berlin, who I have already seen once in our little Zeughaus in Passau, so I already knew them and their great songs with smashing lyrics. And I was not disappointed, although the audience was rather small for the WFF, they really gave a great show and what I especially appreciated, played a song from the band that did not come, for all the Hundred Reasons fans :). ZSK music +4 | charisma +4 After ZSK I had another look around the festival area and all the markets. The AntiFa from Sachsen had their own stand and sold some leftist dressing and gave info about upcoming events, like the G8 meeting next year, where a great resistance is planned. After some looking for a t-shirt and since all the WFF shirts were sold out, I bought a "AntiFa Fight Back" shirt to support them. Then I went back to see the others and drank some more. Before we went to see Arch Enemy, Martin and I packed our tents, fetched M.S.Smoky and packed all out stuff, cause we intended to leave monday a.m. after Opeth and do not spend another day on the meadow. Arch Enemy music +3 | charisma +3 I was already really exhausted on sunday; so while the previous day I almost saw every band from the front row or while I was crowd surfing, I now stayed at a quiet sport, close enough to see everything. Arch Enemy surely was not bad, but they were live not as good as in the songs I previously heard at home, or at least different. Nonetheless I really enjoyed their act. Cause I met Oliver and Marcel (The other two friends of Martin) immediatly after the show, I decided to go back with them, help them pack and spent some more time at our remaining base camp. So I got to know them a bit better. Altogether Martin's friends are a great bunch of people and I am glad that we could spent some time together. Finally we went back (with Oliver's car), met up with the others and looked forward to the gods of Rock'n'Roll: Motörhead. Before Martin and I searched for a little present for Lukas for lending us his car and I ate some cool stew from the "Vegetarian Pirates" stand ^_^. Motörhead music +5 | charisma +10 "We are Motörhead. We play Rock'n'Roll, that's all." With this words Lemmy started their show and then they rocked! Motörhead does not need nor like fancy stage shows, they simply make music and they make it good. They played some awesome songs, every present band member gets his own long lasting solo without interventions of the others, they gave some great tribute to the Ramones and finally give some awesome final, after everyone kept screaming: Zugabe (One more) and Motörhead for a while. Lemmy's voice is something you must have heard live. The coolest show has an end sometime, so after Motörhead we brought Oliver, Martin_2 and Marcel back to their car and said farewell. Then Martin and I went back one last time to see one more band: OPETH Opeth music +5 | charisma +4 Opeth had a bad day. They lost some of their gear (airport?) and went through a lot of trouble to get here. So they were not in the best mood and admitted it. However this just brought them closed to the audience ans showed that they are just humans like we are. So Instead of rocking the stage, they rather tended to slower and more melancholic songs of their repertoire. I stood there and was carried away into another world. It was like a dream, I totally forgot where I was, I just flew on the music through time and space. It was simply wonderful. After Opeth I ordered a cup of coffee and we made back to our dear ship M.S.Smoky. Since I did not want to forget about how to drive completely, we decided that this time driving was up to me. Oh boy, me the one who is completely incompatible to cars and driving has to drive at night in complete darkness. But Martin helped me, he still could remember the way we took to get to the festival from the highway, so we had no trouble getting back there and I slowly "accustomed" sitting behind the steering wheel. The highway was horrible. I was lucky that there were only a few cars. It took me about half an hour driving till I dared around 100 km/h and another till 110 km/h. Then we left to a highway with 3 traces. That was a great relief. Now I could simply stay on the middle track and thus overtake all the trucks while letting all others the possibility to overtake me on the third pace. Slowly I also dared driving up to 120 km/h. Alas with the day proceeding the streets got more crowded and more and more construction sites made the highway to an obstacle drive. With the streets more crowded and later with a two-path motorway my tactic always was to stay as long behind a truck as long as their was a light in my back mirror. Apart from that I think I was the only one who never exceeded the maximal allowed speed. At about half the way, we made a stop at some motorway-In and I drank some more coffee and washed some dirt of my skin. A remark about dirt. The With Full Force festival equals dirt. It was very dry and very hot and there was dust evreywhere with every step you breathed air with a high concentration of dust and the dust grounded on every single pore of your body. We all had dust-lungs afterward. Since we forgot to take a printout for the way back, we tried as good as possible to follow the original printout backwards and of course failed. So we had to take a detour of about an hour :/. It was terrible, imagine me behind the wheel. I am a jitterbug, I could not relax at any time and always really pressed my hands on the wheel in panic. For all those hours we drove home. Martin steadily fed me chocolate to calm me down. I was so dead when we finally came home, but still we both took a shower before we got to bed. Wow I've never seen so much dirt coming down from me! It was horribly exhausting and Martin has fetched a cold, but IT WAS TOTALLY WORTH IT. WFF ROCKS. WFF KICKS. WFF SHAKES THE EARTH! Current Mood: exhausted (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 24th, 2006
6:38 pm	Isn't life just some kind of dream? A Dream. Here's a dream I had some time ago. I was standing at the airport with a friend. I remember that, we wanted to go somewhere and that we did nor arrive from somewhere. I can not remember that it was someone I know in reality, it was just"a friend" in the dream. After we got out tickets this friend jabbed a dagger through my right forearm. Then he ran away. It bled a lot. After some time of helplessly running around I met Claudia, a girl I was in Love once for a long time. She carefully pulled the dagger out of my arm. It did not hurt. However right after she had finished, she also went away. I was alone again. The pain got easier, though the wound was still there and did not stop bleeding. After a while (I was still at the airport) I saw her again at some bar. I noticed that her right forearm was bandaged just at the position where my wound was on my forearm. In the dream I was confused and asked myself why she had the bandage and not me. Then I awoke. Current Mood: numb (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 5th, 2006
11:18 pm	The Great Journey to Madrid ...... and Nippon > Preface < After finally finishing the AI (Artificial Intelligence) diplomacy/master oral exam, I decided to go on a journey. I decided for Spain, because I have never been to Spain before... then again I have never been like anywhere before. No I think I decided to go to Spain for another reason: Kike. Kike is a very good friend of mine for what must be something around five years. I originally met him on the official Blind Guardian IRC channel #tavern. But we stayed friends long after we both left this place. Of course another reason was, that since I have not very much money, I needed a place to stay (and preferrably eat) for free. Since Kike still lives with his parents, a journey came closer to being realistic. Searching some cheap flight tickets, there and back again before the holidays, I eventually found this: Swiss Air: LX 1189 Nürnberg Terminal Zürich Terminal 10:40 - 30 Mrz 11:40 - 30 Mrz LX 2032 Zürich Terminal Madrid Terminal 1 15:55 - 30 Mrz 18:05 - 30 Mrz LX 2021 Madrid Terminal 1 Zürich Terminal 09:55 - 7 Apr 12:05 - 7 Apr LX 1188 Zürich Terminal Nürnberg Terminal 13:10 - 7 Apr 14:05 - 7 Apr for a total of 150 Euro. After having decided to do it, I simply told him that I am going to visit him. He asked his rather surprised parents (the whole process was within 2 weeks), who agreed, although their home was currently under renovation. This renovation meant a lot of stress for them, so I am really glad they took care of me even though everything was going up and down at their home already (e.g. lots of workers). > The Flight < Actually this was my first flight with a plane ever! So you can easily guess that I was pretty scared. After a preemptive early travel to the airport in Nürnberg by bus (2,50 Euro), luckily everything went ok and I got my ticket, got my luggage given up and was waiting in front of the "Gate" for my plane to arrive. Eventually it did. At first I was surprised that reaching the plane, we first had to go by bus and not directly with some cool sucking-device-tunnel like in the movies. Only a couple of instances later, I knew why: My plane was itsy bitsy tiny! Since Nürnberg is a really small airport, and since the cheap-airlines always use the tactic: "Ship 'em to our HQ and from there where they want to be shipped", this makes sense. But this also meant that you sense every single disturbance the plane flies through with all your body. So I was even more scared. A man sitting next to me, as well as the Stewardess discovered this fear, and the man agreed to take care of me. Well it was not as bad as I thought and the man, Christof, did his best to keep me calm. So eventually he discovered that I had a stay of 4-5 hours in Zürich/Swiss. He then offered me: "Having to wait for such a ling time is a real pain in the ass. You know what? I have access to the VIP lounge and can get you in there if you want". After some hesitation, especially because it meant quite some risk for him, because his next flight, in contrast to mine, would leave after 4-5 minutes, I agreed. And there I was. The VIP lounge. Before running of, he explained that food and drinks are for free, that I am free to watch TV in any language I like and should not be shy. At the beginning I just sat on some couch (there where couches like chairs, because of comfort) and watched the others serving themselves with free food and drinks. And speaking of cliche, there were old man with female acquaintance of like 20-30 years younger, which seemed to be attached to the man like glue. Those men earned some harsh gazes of mine. Then I also started to serve myself. There was a enormous variety on booze. But since I don't like alcohol very much, I took a step to the right and discovered and almost equal amount of fruit juice. Hoooray. So I spent 4,x hours with eating cake and chocolate and drinking a full glass of EVERY fruit juice. Even when after 3 hours I got some pain in the stomach I had to continue eating chocolate, 't was for free after all! While eating I also learned some japanese with my books, which I took with me. The next plane was bigger, as expected, and thus the journey was much smoother and I even could sleep/nap for some minutes. Both flights I got a seat at the window, but since the weather was all cloudy I could never see to the ground. Though it is a enormous feeling when the plane stings through the sea of clouds and leaved the bad weather belows while flying diectly under the sun. After crossing the border between France and Spain, the clouds slowly cleared up and eventually I could grasp some impressions of Spain from the air: It is much more reddish and brownish then Germany and the agricultural habits are totally different. That's what I could make from the pictures, offered to me from the plane's window. > Bueñas Dias Madrid < Thus I arrived. After some panic to find my luggage, I had some panic to find Kike and Diana. Next to Kike I also got to know Diana at the same place. So they already knew each other way longer then I know them. Eventually I asked a police officer (in english), if there'd be a place where people often meet. (what a stupid question) Alas the police officer did not understand me, when suddenly a finger tipped on my should from above and a very deep voice said something like: "CAN I HELP?". When I quickly turned around a 2,x meter african guy was looking in my face expectantly (He looked like Brutus Howell in the Green Mile). With Brutus' help I could finally find Kike and Diana. Which was not hard, once reaching the right place, cause we three were apparently the only humans with an age under 30. And the only ones with style. My first impression of Kike was a cuban communist rebel. This impression is now fixed in my mind and Kike will have to live with that. Luckily it is not too far from reality :P. After some chatting we entered the Metro and went to Kike's home. Diana left some stations earlier. Their apartment is very close to the center of Madrid in Principio Pio. I moved in in Kike's room, where Kike insisted that I should use his bed, whilst he was going to use an additional mattress on the floor. Well their apartment was indeed under renovation, which resulted in the absence of a kitchen and a bathroom. As for the kitchen, it was no big deal, since they placed a microwave oven and a kind of pan you could plug into the electricity socket in the living room. As for the bathroom it was a problem. Well I am no one who showers every day, but still I am using a toilet regulary. It was less trouble than I first feared, all you had to do was plan your day a bit and always think about using a toilet when you see one. (There was a toilet, which you could place over a whole and a water bucket to flush, but since this is not too effective and since the bathroom had no doors, you'd rather do it outside). After about 5 days or more the toilet was finally finished and so was the shower a little later. Shortly before I left the bathroom even got a door to close ^_^. Kike's parents really hosted me very friendly, especially regarding the renovations. > Spanish Cuisine < Alas I had to be even more trouble for them, since I am vegetarian and Kike's mother never cooks without meat. So the first two days I got frozen vegetables from the microwave, which was not much, but perfectly ok for me. And after all, I am living there for free. So I was really grateful for being allowed to live there alone. The next days however Kike's mom really took the most of the small resources (microwave and the pan) to show me a piece of (vegetarian) spanish cooking culture. Talking about meals, what I enjoyed most however, where our (Kike and my) breakfasts. We stood up late every day and enjoyed kakao, fruit juice, croissantes w/ or w/o butter and marmalade, puff pastry, chocolate rolls and chocolate cake. =D In general I noticed that spanish olives taste much better, then the once you can get here in german supermarkets. I also munched lots of fried chips, a kind with very few spices and a rather asymmetric natural form, which tasted really great. That maybe why I then took some of these chips and olives back to germany ;). > Recycling Doggy Poo < What also surprised me, is that the spanish do in fact recycle. It is not as far spread as in germany, but on every corner you can at least find three garbage cans (paper, a yellow one for recycling stuff, rest). Additionally many posters encouraged the people to recycle their garbage. These posters were always accompanied with a young woman throwing the shit of her dog into a garbage can (probably the right one). Kike explained that Madrid has a serious problem with old ladies and their dogs shitting everywhere uncontrolled and the ladies refusing to take away what their puppied produce. Everytime I saw and heard some old Ladies talk then, the conversations were about plans how their dogs could shit more efficiently, and which regions were already very shitty, and which needed more (these ladies were organized!) (note of the editor: I can neither speak nor understand español). > Bio? Bio Fruita!< As surprisingly as the recycling had been, as surprisingly was that biological food seemed to be popular too. There were quite a few BIO-shops, that I recognized on our forays through the spanish capital. A thing that you could get on every corner where Bio Fruita juices: These where fruit juices mixed with some milk, which tasted awesome. I also took some of those back to germany. I can recommend: Bio Fruita Pacifico. Though after having drunken many of these bright greenish and bright orangish fluids, I start to doubt that the BIO is meant as bio-organic ;). > Spanish Beer < is said to be very good. Alas I dislike beer, which is why I cannot tell you if this is true. What I can tell you is, that Madrid's preferred beer label: "Mahou" means Magic, Sorcery in japanese. What I also can tell you is, that this Mahou comes in 1 Liter bottles and not as german beer in 3/4 Liter bottles and that you can get it everywhere at any time, cause no matter where in Madrid you are, there's some chinese store next to you selling it to you, even if it is 3 am. > Chipsies & Chinese < Speaking of which, in Madrid you will encounter very many chinese. Many of them open small grocery stores, where they buy the groceries from a real supermarket and re-sell them for a higher price. Apart from that they knee and sit on every street with some box or carpet placed before them and try to sell sweets and other stuff (especially once the sun has disappeared). Next to the chinese there are also many chipsies which seem to be more specializes in selling black market stuff on their carpets (copies of movies, music, etc.). In fact there is even a part of Madrid called the Black Market. On Saturdays you can get anything there you can imagine, for a small prize (Just like eBay, but with more adventure). Because of my short stay, we could not visit the Black Market though. Thinking about the chinese stores, something like a "Ladenschlussgesetz" (a german law prohibiting stores to be open after 8 pm and on sundays) seems not to exist in Spain. > Night Life < Staying in context, these chinese 24h kombini (japanese for 24h convenience store) can survive mainly because in Madrid, no matter what time it is, there are hundreds of hundreds of (young) people on the streets. Just for comparison, while having not really much more in size, Madrid has twice as much inhabitants as Berlin (Berlin: 2.5 millions, Madrid 5 millions). That's one reason for that. Though Madrid is by no means crowded. There were very few cars in the city center, and never enough people to really feel uncomfortable because of crowdiness. That was amazing. On some evenings/nights we also joined this action. Like on this one day, we met at some big open place (I don't remember which one) and met some of Kike's friends. Kike is an artist and so are many of his friends (more of that later), so a big deal of the night was spent in examining and marveling each others recent work. So it was very interesting even for me, who could by this time at least say: No se hablar español (I don't speak spanish). Much beer was drunken, which as now in many german cities as well, is prohibited in Madrid. So from time to time the police came and checked us. SPANISH POLICE, that means girls and guys with neon yellow / white uniforms and helmets on neon yellow / white scooters that BY NO MEANS look authorative, they looked like clowns (at least to foreigners like me). They constantly drove in circles around the place, until they "attacked". "Attacking" means, they suddenly left the scooters and went to some people hurrying in drinking up their beer, before the police arrives. They then give you the choice of surrendering your booze to them or surrendering your booze to them and getting an complain. The choice is really not that hard... On other days we went to a special kind of pub/disco typical for Madrid. It actually is neither of them: It is a really small room with a bar, music and a TV for music video clips and the playlist. The room is so small, because you are rather supposed to get your booze and then go back to the street. This works pretty well for Madrid, because it is rarely really cold outside, and most of the night life plays on the streets anyways. We for example were in a etablisement called Metalmorphosis, where they played J-Pop and J-Rock songs and the corresponding japanese video clips. > Music < Concerning music, I noticed that many germany bands seem to be pretty popular in spain. Though with few exceptions, that bands I heard all sing in german, not in english. Combining pubs/disco music, mp3-player of others I listened to and talking I got to know, that the following bands are popular: Rammstein (surprise surprise), Lacrimosa (surprise indeed!), Schandmaul, In Extremo, Svbway to Sally, Blutengel & Terminal Choice. > Expomanga < You might wonder, why Nippon was included, whilst I journeyed to Madrid. Well till now the term "japan" and "japanese" has already fallen some times, and it will grow exponentially now: On my first weekend, we visited an exposition of japanese manga, anime and merchandising simply called Expomanga. After japanese music and kombini I finally arrived in Tokyo itself. What I saw was: Many people in awesome cosplay costumes (cosplay, japanese: comes from costume play, people dressing and acting like japanese manga and anime characters) - I have made tons of photos of them, but alas my camera (a purely mechanical one without batteries) did not work properly and not a single picture came out of it. Merchandising wherever you looked: From authentic equipment of anime/manga characters to buttons and posters, you really could get anything there. Art: There was an expose about some comic artists and their techniques. Stars: The Mangaka of Cat Shit (A serious treatise of vietnam with bunnies, it is really good critique and by no means without niveau). I asked him in japanese: sumimasen, kono manga ha supeingo no manga desu ga, supeingo dekimasen. Nihongo no manga mo arimasu ka. (Sorry, this manga is in spanish, but I do not speak spanish. Is there also a japanese version? Alas there wasn't. Kike's friends: We also met some of the friends, I got to know the other day at the big place at night. What I did was: Take part in a survey of a spanish TV-channel concerning the broadcasting of anime. Most question were easy to understand (Latin rules) and answer. Though some were like: what is your favorite series on our channel: none what other spanish channels do you watch: none. What don't you like most on our channel: everything and nothing and so on ^_^ I bought two posters: Vampire Hunter D for me and One Piece for my brothers. I fell in Love with an authentic Full Metal Alchemist State Alchemist Watch, which cost 35 Euro, which is why I did not buy it. I got one free manga, from some series, that looks pretty crappy. Furthermore it is issue #16 .... (It's called Nori Taka) I shot photos of all the cool cosplay :( > Politics < A rather strange jump you think, not at all! The expomanga was organized by the leftist party of Madrid. But since they have not used it for political propaganda, I could not figure out why a political party would organize an expo on manga. Kike said, they do it because of the money, which makes no sense, too. Since it won't result in high profits and there are better ways in earning money... Jumping from Madrid to Marbilla, politics become much more fascinating. The whole region of Marbilla can politically be described with one word: CORRUPTION. Madrid also suffers under corruption, but on a relatively low level. Madrid's corruption leads merely to a vast amount of constructing companies which steadily build and tear down things everywhere in Madrid (cause some people earn good money if those construction companies have a lot of work). That is why no matter where in Madrid you are, you can see lots and lots of cranes. I thought it would be an interesting art project to photograph and show / view Madrid by cranes. That can either mean a pictures series with all the construction sites or FROM all the construction sites, so to say from the airy view of the cranes. Madrid from the eyes of it's thousands of cranes :) But let's got back to Marbilla: It all stared when we (the whole family) watched TV-News. Once Marbilla was shown on the TV everyone (but me) laughed. They then explained me, that after Marbilla's last mayer is in prison for openly using public funds for renovating his house, the current (female) mayer now goes to prison for using public funds for tons of tons for beauty operations and liftings. This means within one legislation term the government of Marbilla has to be reellected for the third time now. Apart from that the region os full of funny corruption stories. > My family for nine days < Kike's father, a communist. Yeah that's true. From what Kike told me, he really is affected by the idea of Marx and Engels, adapted to a modern scale, taken in consideration what happened in the Sowjet Union. Although his father works for the spanish military, he is a pacifist. He uses his position to spread his communistic ideas within the military and he has quite a few people who listen to what he says and think about it. Pretty cool! I am not sure about the mother's profession, but Kike told me, that before she and her husband met, she was totally uninterested in politics and now she wears T-Shirts with red stars ;). Kike's sister is 17 and still goes to school. Last year she had been in Norway for a year. > Marmotfish Studios - www.marmotfishstudio.com < As I have already told you Kike and many of his friends are artists, comic artists. And indeed, Kike is working for comic studio for some time now, which mostly consists of him and the friends we met. It is nothing big, as you might think, when hearing the word "studio". However they really have their own "studio" in the sense of a place to work, they published one RPG called 6 kingdoms and two fanzines. So we went there for a nice evening of self made RPG by Kike playing in the Metal Gear Solid Universe. And thus I entered the studio: AMAZING. This place is like paradise. Every wall was either decorated with drawings of themselves of with posters of video games, anime/manga, sci-fi and fantasy stuff. There was a "library" with manga and video game artbooks and mannga/anime artbooks. There was a wardrobe with cosplay costumes and a whole armory of weapon replicas. How cool is that? Furthermore it had beds, you could pull out, everywhere. We spend the whole night and the forenoon of the next day there playing the RPG, having Dinner at some restaurant (Kike's friends invited me) and finally watching Dead Leaved and then Blue & Red Halo episodes (All of them!). I loved this place! They also gave me both issues of their fanzine (the first is about sci-fi, the second about video-games) and signed them. Especially the second one. It had extra space for signatures and both Kike and Tony made custom signatures with so much love and care. (Tony took 45 min just for making his signature for me :x ) I love those guys! > Ice Age 2 - http://www.fox.es/iceage2eldeshielo/ < Another day we watched Ice Age 2 with Tony of the Marmotfish gang and other friends of Kike. The cinema was in some huge shopping mal, and there was some kind of special day, where you could watch a movie for free, if you spent 10 Euros in the mal (cass receipts as proof). In the end nobody of us paid anything. Kike did his best to constantly translate important dialogues into english and I think I understood a big part of the movie. I will watch it again in german/english though ^_^. > Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum - www.museothyssen.org < At least on one day I wanted to do stuff (© Kike) with Diana. So the three of us decided to visit one of the many museums in Madrid. We decided for the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. It was great, though we were lucky that they did not throw us out. For each picture we made a small story, what the people in the picture REALLY did and thought. Apart from Alien badlands and tons of porn, the funniest pictures where pctures with small children and babies on them. In the whole epoch there was not a single artist, who was able to paint proper children. ALL of them were totally defomred and overly ugly. And this is an art! Children appear very cute in a natural way, making them appear disgusting and ugly is really hard. I remeber a picture where a eagle in the form of a football flew over an amazingly ugly deformed Baby Jesus who was, no kidding EATING small birds. If you ever come to Madrid and if you like Art at least a tiny bit and have some sense of humor and friends with you, visit this place. It's worth the while! > Means of Transportation < Depending on our goal we either walked or took the Metro. Since we lived pretty close to the center, walking was no problem. The Metro in Madrid is pretty cheap: 1 Euro for 1 drive, 5 for 8. And they have a pretty cool system, that makes black driving pretty hard. There are gates, that you can only pass with a valid ticket, which lead to the interior station area. Once in there, you can drive as much as want and change Metro as often as you want. :) What I also noticed pretty early: Although Madrid is pretty suitable for going by bike (not too much overcrowded, few cars, special bike ways), no one uses bikes. And I mean no one. In the 9 days that I spent in Madrid I saw a total of 3 bikers. One I have seen twice, and both were foreigners, for sure (they must have been!). When asking Kike for it, he said it's because of the hills. But I walked through Madrid several times. Yes there are hills, but not everywhere and not too though ones. I think it's really strange. 5 million people and none use bikes. > Ciduad Universidad - http://www.ucm.es/info/ucmp/index.php < Since in contrast to germany, there were no university holidays in spain, Kike should have gone to the uni. Well at least two times we did. The University in Madrid consists of a whole separate part of the city, a whole city in itself (Ciudad Universidad = City of the University). And it is pretty nice: Green meadows everywhere, nice parks and walking ways. Really cool. I always spend my time in the Informatica (Computer Science) library learning japanese. It had Windows computers and thus sucked ;) Apart from the nice "outside", Kike told me the "inside" was not as nice. Spanish computer science lacks being up to date: they program in Pascal, they have to learn/attend lectures on physics and electronics, that are just too far away from CS. Also the timetable on state universities is pretty strict, you can not choose what lecture you want to attend in which semester. And you cannot even choose what sector you want to listen to in after the Bachelor's degree. > Adios Madrid < On the last day before my departure, I decided to show my gratitude to Kike's parents a second time through cooking a typical german meal. The first time was after my arrival, when I gave them two presents from Germany: Nürnberger Lebkuchen (a sweet spiced kind of bread) and a german whole-wheat bread. But there were obstacles: The first was that Kike's friends from Marmotfish wanted to say Adios to me. Before we met up with them, we also payed a visit to Panjins Mangastore, cause I decided to buy some souvenirs. Especially I knew what my souvenir will be: The FMA State Alchemist watch, I saw at the Expomanga. Apart form that I also bought a Manga for my penfriend from Vilshofen and some other stuff. Alas they only had time pretty late. So after buying everything we needed for cooking, we met up with them at 7 pm. We went to a real pub called Labyrinth. A pub for gamers and roleplayers and all the other geeks and freaks. It had some cool tabletop games and tons of other games. We talked for a while (this is where the guys made the signatures) and then did not say Asta Luego (See you later), but Adios :'/. We returned somewhat after 11 pm and immediatly started cooking. The second problem: For cooking I at least would have needed one oven hotplate, nut we had none. So we tried to cook the potatoes with the microwave, while preparing the rest. I was going to make a kind of potato - paprika stew, that I love. Once we had all together, we re-put it in the microwave for 10 times, cause the potatoes refused to become soft by microwaves. After over 2 hours we gave up and ate, although the potatoes were still not really soft, but you could eat them. Luckily it tasted really really good and I think it was worth the waiting. I just found it inpolite and strange from Kikes mother, that once we were done cooking, she made him some hamburger with minced meat telling me, poor Kike would not eat without meat... > Take Flight < On the last day we had to hurry to get to the airport. Kike's parents insisted in saying Adios to me, but since we all got to bed very late the last day, they had a hard time getting up. So we arrived a little late at the airport, then had to search quite a bit for the Swiss Air terminal, then had to wait there, then had to stand in a never line for control, then the swiss terminal guy came and told us how to get through faster, cause else I would miss the machine, then Kike was forced to stay out, then I has to run run run, then I saw that I was too late, then I saw that the machine was too late as well and sat down and breathed deep. The flight back was rather unspectacular. The weather was good this time, but a big fat guy sat next to the window sleeping and managed it to use all his meat to block the window in a way, that I could not even see a blue spot on it. In Zürich I had only 20 minutes stay this time, so I just hurried to find the next gate. Back in the small plane, I could grasp a window place and made some really cool impressive photos of the land out of the plane, which of course worked out. I'd rather trade them in for mangaexpo cosplay photos :/. Back in Nürnberg I had to wait for over an hour for my bus. Since we started in Madrid, I noticed that this time there was another human in my age. And she was still there. So I take my courage and spoke to her. Turned out she was indeed from Madrid and does something like the same I did in reverse. She does not speak german but very good english, and she was visiting a friend in Nürnberg for 2 weeks. So I spend the 1.5 hours with telling her my impressions of Madrid and curiously expecting her thoughts and comments on them. Ach, if you ask why "and Nippon" stands in the topic: I flew to Madrid, alright, but I listened to japanese music I played japanese games I visited an expo on japanese manga I visited an comic studio drawing and dealing with manga I almost spoke more japanese then español All the souvenirs I bought are imported from Japan Alas I could not find japanese postcards, else also the postcards I wrote, would also have had japanese motifs on their backside ;) > The End BONUS: The first spanish words, that I learned were these: gilipollas gañan hijo de puta There was also one about sodomy with saltfishes, but I can't put it back together right now ;) Current Mood: exhausted (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 26th, 2006
11:03 pm	Save The World! People of this planet, hear me now! My future is laid out. Cheer and scream: wow. My quest is plain and stout. It is clear in my mind, That I will save all of mankind. Yeah that's true. Some weeks ago I had a kind of depression like time, wondering what my future will be about. Since I had no intention either to earn money, nor fame, nor power or whatsoever society values, since I had no intention to work for a big company all night and day for some useless luxury product, that people will spend the money, they don't got, on, since I had no intention to build a house with a green garden in some suburb of a big city raise a family and lead a quiet and good life, never to object society or government, I had to think of something else. I already made up my mind long ago, that I'd use my programming skills, acquired through university, in the OpenSource sector (Software for free for everyone) and that I no matter what job I might take, will simultaneously engage myself in social welfare and left politics. But during this time I realized that this would not make me happy, I needed to find something else, some different future. Then it was, that I decided to save the world. Yay, the decision was made, I knew what my goal was. What remains is the "how". So I started planning, how to achieve this goal. First thing, before you start laughing, is that one key proverb, to understand my intention, is: What counts is not the goal, but the path towards this goal. Secondly, if you're familiar with RPGs, you might see rescuing the world as main quest with a hell lot of sidequests in between. Then I started with thinking about the preparations before starting the quest and thus planned PHASE 1. PHASE [1] - Training - First things first, I decided to complete my current study at least with the german diplomacy degree (corresponds to master in other systems) and maybe even with a doctor's degree. Why you ask? Well look at it as a kind of emergency or backup-plan, in case anything goes wrong thoroughly. With a degree, that means a lot to our society, but nothing to me, I do not have to be afraid to end up helpless. Furthermore I will be able to improve me still very basic skills with computers, that will be required later (= doing some leveling up in computer skills). Right, let's assume I got this. We're still far from the end of phase one. After maxing my computer skills, there is quite a bunch of other knowledge and skills to acquire. Namely medicine, electronics and mechanical engineering. However these will be acquired much faster, since I do not need another useless society valued degree, but merely the know-how to fix machines, and be able to help and advise sick people on my journey. Last but not least, I will have to acquire some healthy bodily strength, one or two world languages and knowledge about the next places I am going to pay a visit to. Having all that a final planning will be done, how exactly we will proceed, and then the journey will begin. PHASE [2] - The Quest - Now I will travel from village to village, probably starting in some country, that does not count to the rich industrial ones, and see what I can do. That means I will be able to fix machines necessary for survival and help and advise sick people. Furthermore I will try and set up a computer system with internet access somewhere. Then I will teach them all they need to know, to use the internet to gain knowledge, which will allow them to help themselves. That means for example teaching english, as well as basic computer skills. Of course great attention must be paid to local cultural peculiarities. By no means must someone ever be forced to learn something or to use a computer etc. It must always remain an offer to help. Also medical aid without the required permissions might cause problems in "second" and "first" world countries and must thus also be given with great care. Now you'll tell me, that all of this sounds really fine and noble, but that rescuing the world this way will never work. Well you forget that we are in the wired age, the age of global information, where the whole world has become pretty small. Let's head on to PHASE 3. PHASE [3] - Wildfire - Until now we had assumed that I was alone on this journey. But a good RPG never has only one main character but a whole party of them. And indeed, two people already agreed to accompany me on the quest. For once this reduces the work and time of PHASE 1, since when there's already someone capable of the basic skills, we won't have to acquire them anymore. Secondly I think it the party size will steadily grow. For example once we crossed a place, chances are high, that someone, who also has a different view of her/his future will hook up with us. This combined with the existence of media like the internet might in a best case scenario create a wildfire effect. Going back to PHASE 2, this can effect in an effective help network over the internet giving visited villages constant help, even if we are gone off to the next location. Even better, the places we visited can communicate with each other and help and assist the other part. Thus not solely a information, but also a wonderful help network will be established. We will publish our progress steadily on the internet, maybe attracting many sympathizers, which will support our idea or ideally also join our party. While TV or newspaper/tabloid fame will never be our goal, it also might support our idea. This is one core aspect: The idea. No matter whether all people support us, but if they somehow got hold of the idea, they are already passive supporters. To sum it up, we now (ideally) got an effective network between many people, we got an idea set up in peoples mind and we got a lot of active supporters and sympathizers. If you look up these in some books written after and about revolutions, you got all the requirements it takes for one. So the (ideal) outcome might indeed be a worldwide revolution, based on love, help, friendship, joy, fun, communication, teaching and learning and non-violence. It might indeed save the world. You might still laugh about me, but I am serious about it. And if you think about it, why not try it? The worst than can happen, is that the effects described in PHASE 3 won't occur, still this means we helped a lot of people by then. And thus moved a little step towards the goal. And there are already many many people in the world that perform those, slowly but steadily, step by step. Why not make some of these steps ourselves. And who knows, even if the chances are low, the internet and world media give us an unique chance, that never was there before. in love your little revolutionist michael Current Mood: optimistic (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 17th, 2006
8:00 pm	Occupation of Erlangen University This is Michael reporting live from the big castle right in the center of Erlangen, where the university's director is at home. Some students spontaneously decided to occupy the whole castle together with all the university offices within as a natural reaction to the planned introduction of university fees here in Bavaraia, Germany. Whilst I was enjoying (or rather bearing) a lunch at the Mensa, I humbled across some students talking about this occupation, that has taken place this morning. After some brainstorming I thus decided to throw my plans to learn at the library over board and instead try to learn in the big castle. Said and done, I turned my little body-energy to cinetic force vehiculum and drove it there. Being where I was heading, I opened the big doors, just like in a RPG, moved in and looked baffled gazing at the dimensions of this building. It was huge. Keeping a clear mind I probed the area for liveforms and stumbled across some secretary on her way to the copy machine. "Might I enquire where squatters are to be found?", I asked politely. "Try the first floor", the woman answered slightly irritated. And up I went! In the first floor the squatters have build up their base camp. There's a huge conference room in this floor, which was used as dormitory, kitchen, TV, get-together, and study room. The place was big enough for all of this. What I reckonized at the first glance was, that these people were totally cool. Simply judging by their individual appearance and behavior. Spotting the biiiig table, where apparently those intending to learn were placed, I decided to stick to my original plan and join them. Surprisingly I really got some work done. Time heading towards evening I decided also to spend my night there. So I asked around if it is save to leave now and come back with sleeping equipment later and got the answer: maybe. Because with (time > officials working time threshold) => locking of the doors, the officials decided to indeed lock the front castle doors, but in their gratitude also placed a security guy looking after us, letting us out to smoke and back in again. Problem is, this man decided that though smoker are let back in, others, so to say new arriving recruits are not. About my problem: I simply made sure the sec would remember me by telling him some inimitable features of me. About the new recruits: We made up a plan to plant them in: The sec guy always counts the people who go out smoking, so that he can judge if the same number that left, will enter again. So the plan went like this: One non-smoking girl caught the guy up in pretty talk, while a vast number of "smoking and non-smoking" people went out at the account of having a smoke. Like this the sec was unable to keep count of the people and we could bring new poeple in. Both plans worked out just fine, and i was able to get back in loaded with a horseload of sleeping equipment: a sleeping roll, an iso mat, a cloth bed, a pillow, tooth brush and paste and and and (way too much to carry by bike, so I had to invent a clever machinery to transport all of these things. I took a belt, linked them all together and made a great ball o' stuff, which I somehow tried to stick to my back (poorly). Yay, now I started to get to know people, talked about anime, manga, music, politics and such stuff, had some nice dinner and played some games with the other squatters. A girl taught me a really cool game called "Castor Transport". In this the participants are grouped in two groups: Demonstrators and Police. The demonstrators sit down on a line and chain into each other as best as they can. Linking arms, feet and whatever other extremities come in usefull. Then the police tries to tear them apart and get them off the track, while the demonstrators shout all the cool demo-paroles. It was really fun! Alas my time (not surprisingly the demonstrators) lost to "brutal" police force. After some long evening I finally decided to go to bed, intending to participate in tomorrows lectures like a bad strike breaker. After brushing me teeth, a girl sleeping next to me introduced herself as Marissa from Australia. She told me that she is just doing a couch surf through Germany. Couch surfing is really cool. It is a kind of network, where people offer each other their couches for a visit in their city. This means if you want to visit a city in a forgein country like Marissa you do not need to search or pay for a youth hostel or whatever. Furthermore you have a nice save stay, something to eat (you can cook with your couchsharer and above all a local, who knows her/his way around the city. If your target city is big enough or if your lucky, you can also discriminate the offers by looking for common interests (vegetarian, music, rpgs and so on). Marissa looked for people fond of SKA and thus already visited several excellent "underground" SKA concerts all over germany. Try doing this with a travel agency ;). This is also how she ended up here with the squatters. Her current couch host told her about it and that he is going to take part in this action and she immediatly burst in joy and also joined it. After that I had some poor sleep and awoke by a horrible wake-up call, that some decided to do. Good thing, this way I had a excellent and refreshing breakfast with the others and still made it in time to my lectures. After which I immediately drove back to see what is left of our forces. They were already greatly diminished (at high times we reached the 100 threshold) and all fed up in cleaning operations. I offered my hands and we swept the place of all traces that we had left the previous day Finally the police arrived to inspect everything and said: "You were really nice all the time, we ought to praise you. Apart from that we think it's important what you do, so keep it up". :( Isn't that humiliating! The police praising you for being tidy and a good citizen, when you just squatted a house as a form of protest. *sigh* Well thinking about it, it was good after all, that the police "supported" us. Because that meant we got excellent press. Otherwise we would just have been the evil violent students, now we were the brave with-standers. And woooh! we really got press. Some national newspapers made big articles, with huge photos of the castle decorated with our banners saying "OCCUPIED". Furthermore statewide TV-Broadcasters and many radio stations talked about us non-stop. Even the BILD-Zeitung (for those who know it) wrote about us positively, whether this is a reason for joy or loathe I cannot answer ;). Well that's it, I hope I could give you some impressions of the Occupation of Erlangen's Castle and encouraged you to do the same. It's real fun ;). Oh and as far as I know, I can close with the words: To be continued (in summer). Yours truly nice and praised catsle-squatter >michi Current Mood: jubilant (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 6th, 2005
2:58 pm	The Brotherhood (Brethren of the Rapier Part II) As promised and longed for I hereby report on my new home: The house of the Corps Rhenania-Brunsviga. Though I naturally had some prejudices against such brotherhoods, I gave it a chance. Ok actually it was my last hope, as I couldn't find any other place, that I would have been able to afford, in Erlangen that is. I had to move fast, cause university started the day after I moved in and I had no time before that date cause my old university has kept my busy with way too mayn tests. No matter now I am here. And almost all prejudices were vain, at least for this corps. I learned that the prejucides indeed apply to many corps, but not to this one. It is kind of special and the only thing they're proud of is being special. That means for example that right now I am living here with 7 other people: 1 Black/Death Metal E-Guitar player 1 Hip/Hop Rapper from Italy who sings in a german Hip/Hop band called Anbau Sound 1 economy guy from Turkey 1 Gamer (plays and has all the new games) 1 Roleplayer. Dungeon Master for Vampire RPGs. 1 Linux freak from Rusia 1 Manga and MMORPG Fan from China 1 also RPG fan I presume, don't know much about him Uhm yeah you're right. Now that you mention it, I count eight people plus me would make nine, however there are only eight people living here, me thinks. Hmm something isn't right there. I will look into this and report later. Before I came here, there even was a guy from africa. So much for this prejudice. Well and above all: they took me! An insane long-haired guy, who dislikes beer, is vegetarian, left-winged activist and revolutioner, LARP player and brabbles only nonsensical stuff. ;) You see they aren't what you'd expect of corps memeber. Even the fencing is rather an artistic fencing, than a fighting. Curiously enough you mustn't say fighting or opponent, but play and partner. The most you can say is that it is like an artistic presentation (like a dance) of your and your partners abbilities. Like in shows. Ah yes the fence-master, who comes every saturday at 4:30 am comes from the Netherlands and is a vegan =). As you can see, you do not need to worry about me, on the contrary you should envy me, for I am living in a huge villa with two kitchens (incl. refrigerator, dishwasher), eight toilets, many showers, a huge garden, a swimming pool, a shoe-cleaning-machine, a pool-billiard room, a pub, a traing's room and and and for 80 bucks a month ;P and and and: a cleaning lady as well as a gardener and a concierge. And I already made friends with the guys mentioned above, so I'm really enjoying lvining here and maybe - I still have and take my time to think about it (five months left) - I'll even join the corps. mika out. Current Mood: energetic (Comment on this)
Friday, October 28th, 2005
11:48 am	destination Erlangen log book entry, captain mika-chan, year of the starflower Me and my crew savely landed on the planet Erlangen one week ago. We are now settled in and have established a basecamp some 15 min from the planet's center of population. We started a rudimentary map of our location and already mapped like 20% of the planet surface. We also made first contact to the local inhabitants. Though close to our home planet, they have a very different culture and neglect living in the same galaxy. You simply mustn't mention the galaxy's name, that's all. Apart from that they are very open minded and friendly towards aliens. I also noticed that the climate is much warmer than our home was and it rains less. Our blessing and farmers' curse, I guess. While the planet exists for quite some time, the people living on it appear to be very young altogether. As diplomat-technician from Passau, I already apllied at the local technocenter. It is much larger then the one, I used to work in, like about more then twice the size. The main computer section is located in a skyscrapper with 12 levels. However I noticed that you cannot access level 3 - neither by lift nor with stairs. The later cuts of after level 2 and continues at level 4, so the lift is obligatory to access the higher levels. I assume level three is either reserved for forbidden experiments on organic lifeforms or maybe a detention level for lifeforms who cannot behave. I will look into this afair and report additional material, once I explored the exact reason of this level. Of course I will proceed with precaution. Next point on the list is the local menu. Being alien to the planet I already expected a different taste and culture concering the food of the locals, but my expectations were still too high. They do not eat from plates like we do, but use big trays and simply slap their "food" on the tray and eat from it. Oh boy even worse this strange tray totters all the time, the architect must either have been insane or a sadist. I already have, with the help of locals, developed a method to undergo this tottering by a special way to use additional cutlery as base support underneath the tray. That's about their eating habits, but what is even worse is the "food" itself. While having a comparable price to my home planet, you get a lot less plus it tastes and looks disgusting. I hope I can adpat or find a way to undergo this local "feeding" procedure. Maybe this explanation only fits for the technocenter's kitchen though, because I have not yet tried anything else. Ok let's talk about positive aspects I have found so far. While back at home the main form of transportation was a standard automobile, they are primary using a reduced form with only two wheels and no additional engine. Of course this also means that their infrastructure is highly adapted to this kind of vehicles and only sparely for automobiles. These so called "bikes" are not only smoother than automobiles, they also produce no polution and provide a faster way of transportation for short distances - since the planet is layed out for using them. I am enjoying this fact very much. What else can I report? Well I will talk about our basecamp another time, since I still have to figure out several things and since I do not want to tell you uncertain, pending things, that might not be true or accurate. The same counts for the local ways of "spending an evening, respectively a night", this scientifical area must also be more explored, before I can make any assumptions about it. That's about it for the moment. A more detailed description of the technocenter, as well as the language aspect and a description of the basecamp will follow soon. Closing log -Captain mika out- Current Mood: hungry (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 20th, 2005
11:40 pm	Brethren of the Rapier Time is drawing near for me to say farewell to my dear city, university and all that I grew dear to me in Passau. Because of Passau cutting japanese lessons, I am forced to move to somewhere else, if I want to continue japanese beneath my main: computer science. So after some searching, sleeping and thinking I decided to move to Erlangen. The city seems ok, its not too far from home (3:30h by train) and you can study cs and japanese there. With my mind made up, all that is missing now is a room to live in. So (1) question the almighty internet for advice, (2) make some dates in Erlangen and (3) drive there watch and despair or exult. (1) gave me several adresses and numbers most of which were already gone, too expensive or simply didn't answer my calls. At least (2) I got three dates out of it . So (3) I went there by train, but maeh, one "date" insited in me being there before high noon, so I had to grab the train at 6 am, which is the slow train. There are two cheap trains going uo there: fast train 3:30 h, slow train 4:30 h. Four hours and thirty minutes later I arrived in Erlangen and found (buyed) a map. *Tadadada* YOU HAVE FOUND THE MAP. I equipped it, but darn, I hadn't found the compass yet. So with some clever thinking I just went around in a circle untill I indeed could figure out where north was by comparing streets that were next to each other. Hah who needs a compass? Stupid Link! Well done. ONE With my map equipped I easily could find waypoint one. Arriving there I contaced my secret middleman with a telephonebooth and she showed my the secret hidden passage to room 237. *Ieeek*. No no this room is smaller, uglier, stinkier, simply worse and still more expensive than my current chamber or torment. I wanted to run away, but remebering that I never would have found back to the roads listed on my map - I calmed myself and waited till my middlewoman lead the way back. Then I run away... TWO Alrighty! One gone two more to go. Map equiped. Yay Its realy cool walking through the "open land" with a map. Oki found waypoint two, which was my target all the same. *Knock Knock*. "Come In, If you want to wait a little I get the senior". Huh? Senior? well ok, I thought and waited like a good boy. Senior came (he was quite young, not more than my age, maybe younger). Hello you are here for the room I guess? Yeah. Okay let me show you around. Awesome! This was no house, this was like a mansion or a castle or stuff like that. This thingie got 3 kitchens (one for each floor), 1 living room, 1 TV room, 1 Billirad room, 1 pub room, 3 bathrooms with bathtubes and showers and more than 8 toilets (only 8 people lived in there!), 1 Pool, 1 Pavillion with grill, 1 Fighting/Training room (huh fighting and training room?) and and and. Amazing. Plus they got High-SPeed DSL 5000 and telephones for each one in the house! The room had 20 m² and thus was quite ok too. Now the price: [first for comparission im paying 240 euro now, and the other room in Erlangen would have cost me 265 Euro] and this one 80 Euro all in all and no more. Chin clapping open, Spidey Sense beeping like mad. "You are kidding me? Are you serious?" "Well yes indeed I am, still there is one condition". I KNEW IT, My Spidey Sense had not betrayed me. "YOu have to train fencing with us one hour a day." Hmm strange, but ok I thought, but there was more. "After a training phase you will have to fight combats with us. Its called Mensur you will fight with real sharp weapons against opponents without any protection. - - silence - - W00t? "Yes, but don't be afarid, its not as bad as it sounds". "You guys are fighting with sharp weapons?" - "Yeah, where do you think that come from?" - he pointed at a scar in his face. omg they art insane! I don't wanna die! mommy. "Don't be afarid", he calmed me, "at first you won't fight any hard combats, there will be a middleman that wears the usual fetching armour and will jump in between when you or your oponnent make any illegal moves. He will only be there for the first levels of combating. Plus in the first level you are only allowed done attack to the hibs; head's taboo at first and it will go round by round. So you attack opponent defending, then the other way round. In level 2 attacks from above are allowed. Then you can get scars in your face. But it will be some time till then. On satrudays one of the world's famoust fetch masters will come visiting us and see your progress at 3:30 am and will give all some valuable tips and training. Yeah appart from that you'll have to go with us to "pub-meetings" from time to time and sing raditional songs with us in chorus". He really is serious. Theres no joking. I am not in a kind of movie. Ahhh! Appart from this "little" insanity they seem to be farily ok, they play RPGs (Vampire the masquerade) on weekends and seem not to to respect the Elders rule too much. The Elder are the Ex-Fecthers who pay for all this and make the conditions (I guess some perverted old men, enjoying seeing young boys fighting each other and bleeding). At last he explained me that for reasons of tradition, no girls are allowed to join the brotherhood or corps as the official name goes and I protested, but he explained me that there were many discussions about girls, but that there is no chance against the Elders. Before I left he showed me the chamber of tradition. The Elder insist in having their own room in this mansion. OMG. There was a poor stuffed fox and some deer above a chamin (My stomach turned around). Some rapiers on the wall (crossing each other of course) and the worst of all: On the whole wall was a never ending line of pictures from the Elder. Starring at you. There was some matress on the floor and he told me not tell the Elder, cause it's forbidden. Forbidden? I just imagine sleeping in this room: At night the fox' and deer's ghosts will climb down and say: "Why have thouh murdered us? We will haunt you boohoo" and when you then quickly turn around, you will face the picture wall. And all those people will stare at you 100 pircing glances tormenting you till eternal suffering will drive you in some kind of coma like sleep. Yeah quite a neat place to sleep. Oh boy. 80 Euro and the house would be all like a dream. I'd have like 220 Euro more per month and so much more comfort (which I of course wouldn't need, but still... ;)). Oh boy. What am I going to do? INTERSECT The next shightseeing tour did not start before 3 pm, so I had some time to walk around the city. First Mission: Buy a local newspaper and look for additional sights. That was fairly easy back near the station I just went into the next Lotto store and bought a local newspaper. Then I looked up all the promising adds and marked them with a marker. I always got a whole survival kit in my backpack ;). Since I am still withstanding the cell phone flood and being a brave fish swimming against it, I choose a phone booth near the station and called the marked people. :-( But Nada. Either the rooms were already given away or too far away or something else didn't fit. Darn. Second Mission: The Hunger Right. A bit sad about the bad room situation I went looking for some food. There was a market in Erlangen in this day, but ALAS there was not a single veggie thing to have there for lunch and not much as a whole. So I went on and explored the pedestreal area. There I choose the first turkish restaurant which did not think that a veggie Dönner is bread with salad and onions and had one. Third Mission: Killing Time Of course all I wanted to kill was time itself, for those who didn't get it at first ;) Well I magically followed my sixth sense and suddenly stood there facing a small side alley not all too promising. I don't know why, but I knew that I could spend some time there. So said and done I explored the alley and right before I wanted to turn back, on my left appeared a Manga/Anime/Comic store YAY ^_^. And even YAYer next to it was a Fanatsy store. Yuphieh! I entered the first one and immedeatly noticed that in fact it was one big store containing both Comics and Fantasy stuff, separated by two steps. Amazing. I spent some time talking to the owner, who advised me not to take sight TWO and then went on to THREE. THREE Wooo this piece was really hard to find, as my map's name register did only tell me the corresponding quadrant (J-7, not the delta quadrant sorry), but not where in fact this road was placed. So I activated my Pathfinder plug and started to serach the arrea in circles (more like squares) and finally found it, and quite in time. Luckily for me most of the area was covered by a big park. And assuming she would have lived in the park, I immeadiatly would have seen her, I guess :). *ring* *ring* "Hello?" - "Hi, I'm the guy looking for a room" - "Sorry I already gave it to someone that was here some minutes before you, go away" - "What? Hey do you know how long it took me to find this place here and now you're sending me away, just like that?" - "Yes, Good Bye" *klick* --silence-- RESOLUTION *head hanging low* I went back to the station... "when's the next train" me asks. "Ah your lucky, it's the "fast" (Substitution) train. It'll start at 3 sharp on rail 7. The next would depart quite late and take even longer to arrive, so you'd better hurry." *me looks on his watch and then at him* "Oh its already 5 minutes past 3, I'm sorry. Let me check for the next train. Oh it does not leave before 5 pm and it's the "slow" (Substitution) train" me: "you're not serious, are ye?" "Yes I am, sorry, I'm really sorry. You could take one of those fast (<- no Substitution) trains" "Errr right, that would cost how much?" "Just 80 Euro" "Yeah see you at 5..." Back to Intersect Mission III. I spent the next two hours in the Fanatsy/Manga store and played some Magic with two three year olds. However those kids had cards more worth than several fast (<- no Substitution) train tickets - so I'd lost every but one game. Back to Resolution. Hopped the train and waited. 10 min later the next station in Nürnberg was in sight. There I changed the train and waited. Waited. Waited. Anouncment: "There are some people on the rails, our train will depart 10 min later. Sorry for the inconvinience". 15 minutes later. "Sorry again. There are people on the rails. There will be an unkown delay in our start." Waiting. Waiting. 30 min later. ok guys settle up we will depart immedeatly. And we did - I guess some of the people went out for a walk, because of the huge delay, and were now left back at the station. *hehe* 2 hours later. Arriving in Landshut I had some 10 min before the next train came - so I went for some tomato-mozarella baguette. Met a Punk there and imedeatly knew what to ask: "What Demo was there in Nürnberg today?" *I giggled knowingly due to me seventh sense* Punk: "You don't know? Today was Rudolf Heß (Hitler's vice) remebereance march in Wunsiedl. All left people and many other went there to stop the expected 5000-10000 nazis which were expected to come. Well those and above all the police were/was well prepared and effective and managed it to stop like more than 6000 to even reach Wunsiedl. So the Nazis parted into several splitter groups one of which went to Nürnberg. Bad idea. Nürnberg is know for its people all helping together, once it stands against Nazis. So several leftists and even more ordinary civillians formed a spontaneous Demo and drove the Nazis outta town -> to the rails. There they were escorted after a while by the police to some trains and shipponed off, as intended." Cause I knew about Wunsiedl, I just didnÄ't remeber that it was today... "Cool" I said and talked a little with him till my train arrived. Thus I also learned that appearently niot more than 20 nazis seemed to have reached Wunsiedl. *hehe* Some more hours later. All in all with the delay I spent 10 hours in trains on this day. Well, I looked forward in coming home, and did, but not comfortably. In my wagon there were a whole bunch of Ex-Military Service guys, all with white shirts, where all their dudes had given their signature on. And they tried tipping the wagon of the rails by wild jumping and running against the walls. After that they started singing. They sung the most horrible songs and with even more horrible vocals. They squirted with beer and other stuff and stank like hell. Great, had to spend two hours next to them - at least the left me alone.... I hate the military. And war. And violence. And Capitalism. Last but not least I came back - drove home by bike - and fell in my bed imedeatly. Good Night White Pride Your humble narrator and maybe soon your humble D'Artagnan with some scars in his face :( Current Mood: exhausted (Comment on this)
Sunday, June 26th, 2005
10:39 pm	In today's gazetta: nasty landlords kicking innocent nadsat like bezomny (real horrorshow!) This is your humble narrator again, this time I won't tell you a nicey raskazz, but a tale of woe! My gulliver hurts like bezomny, those landlords which I pay to live in one of their as storage room declared hazardous domies, really kicked my litso again. big time. Already those malchicks make me pay more for vital energy than is agreeable by common sense, already they tricked me once, letting your poor and humble narrator pay for the blue essential fluid of the devotchka that lived here before your narrator, already even the normal landtaxes are way too high to be reasonable, already I had to argue with those lords many times. And present time, they let me pay again. Curiously enough right after I sent my termination notice. Oohoo and last time I payed extra they said that's usual, cause you went it in Octobre, but don't worry next time you'll even get money back. Did I? no, now they want extra bucks - many... For what you ask? Plain Blue Cold Water. Now I do have to tell you about your narrator and water: Your humble narrator lives very eceonmically with water, cause of the nature and stuff, so he cleans his ookoes and nogas only twice a week by shower. Besides YHN doesn't cook everyday so doing the dishes once is aright for a week. Well there also is the heater. The oven. YHN doesn't need to much heat for his yarbles, so your narrator has like not used the warming engine all winter long and preferred to use blankets and wearing warm platties. So you might come to reason that your humble narrator should get money back, eh? But did he? But that makes me use my mozggies, what about other inhabitants under the landlords surveillance, eh? The common malchick showers every day and puts the oven to oohoo maaax zsshhh. There must be some foul moloko around here. As YHN already told you, he is leaving this ghastly place for good, searching for a new domy with his one and best droog. Far away from those ultra violent landlords, what indeed are landladies for political correctness. But those bugatty devotchkas and babooshkas are luck-luck lucky to be hiding beyond big shests, or me and my droogs would do the old ultra violent eegra with our britvas, like real horrorshow. Current Mood: bitchy (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 17th, 2005
12:46 am	Passauer Pfingst Open-Air 2005 What a great weekend. If you ever go to a local festival look into it to get a job there! For me I signed up for stage security. Well most of you might think, Michael? stage security? Is he like crying at people so they won't enter the stage? Well actually that was my plan from the betgining, plus my joker cards: free beer. Second one worked significantly better. No seriously as most people on this festival were Hippies and stuff, there was niot a single one who wanted to access stage by violence. Just smth like: "Pleaaaase let us in. We just want to stand on the stage for 2 min. Being a rockstar once in a life time. You get our botte o' wine here too! Pleasse" - Sorry dudes can't do. or "Hey come on let us in. My friend here wants to show his ass to the whole festival. Do us the favor, he really is going to do it! Want to see his ass?" - No thanks dudes, don't think anyone wanna see it. So it was pretty relaxed. And the benefit from it? - camping backstage (calmn area, no danger of ppl stealing your stuff, good, mostly music next to you tent) - free food and drinks - a clean and usable backstage toilet - meeting the bands after their Gig - seeing Nick Holmes naked under the shower (I'll come to that later) Well so it went. I built up me dear loyal tent on ahill directly behind the stage, using some threads to stabilize it with the fence behind me (against the wind). Got my ID. Alas stage security was out, so I had to do with PRESS. Well it sounds more authorative in my oppinion anyway. Stage Security (SS oh my) - PRESS (again SS first time I noticed hmm). So Day 1: Missed most bands because I came in late. Had to wait for my japanese lession to end and then take the next bus. Well I packed way too much stuff, so I only could carry all of it at once with some special construct I built with a belt. Luckily for me Kim Lim's unfortune chain went on when he locked himself out of his room and had to call the key service. 35 Euro for him :( - free cab to the station for me :). (Poor KimLim he already had had a bike accident this week and had to buy a new bike afterwards) Waiting at the bus stop. Many people with festival stuff were already waiting. Suddenly: "Hey we found a bus driver who had koncked off. He agreed to let himself + Bus being charterd by us. He'll take us directly to the festival unlike the line bus." - YAY coming. It turned out he took everyone of us for only 1,80 Euro to the festival. (line bus 3,60). Great dude. As said got a PRESS ID after I was allowed to find a person who could proove that I'll signed up for the job, as my name was missing on the list... I knew it. Bands on Day 1 I didnt miss: FAUN great medieval scandinavian folk band. Awesome music, gave me a good dance! (Wore my green tunic for this band). I even bought their CD, hey im in here for free anyway, that makes 30 Euro to spent, I thought. Met them backstage nad had a little talk with the singer, a medieval girl joined me. After a short while I was only talkiong to her ans she to me, excluding the singer form our conversation :P Hehe. But they're pretty OK Faun that is yeah. Emil Bulls I heared a sing of them on MTV once and they were said to be pretty good. Well they sucked. Went to the Poetry Slam in the culture tent instead and recited some Samsas Traum, admitting in the end thats it's not my own. Day 2: Had a great night. Indeed I was like the only onw without sleepy eye rings. All my friends envied me. :) Well I had a good desolated isolated place, a wool blanket, iso mat, a mat bed and a bedrool. Best prepared for comfortable sleeping in tents that is. Yay brushed me teeths in the backstage toilet. No waiting. Clean toilets. Awww. Had some noodles with friends and went back to the stage for the first band. Lawaschkiri (La vache qui rit, the cow that laughs or simply laughing cow). Jewish traditional folk band. They rocked! For a band playing at 12:00 the stage was really crowded by poeple. But there was still more than enought room before the stage for dancing. And we danced! and danced and danced! On of the two female singers really smiled all the time and was soo cute, so i decided to go backstage afterwards and throw her a hand kiss. :P Then I accidentially :P crossed her way two times more smiling at her. (Got back nice smiles too!) Read some books, talked to friends and enjoyed myself while your ten mofo (Chill out band), the gogets (austrian punk kiddies), MIG 21 (czech Punk band, pretty neat) were playing. Then came my shift. Junias. Dude if this band wasn't high, then I don't know what. They brought phrases like: Junias: "Well the next song is pretty improtant to me... uhm yes" Crowd: "Why is it important to you?" Junias: "Yes" Junias started playing Strange band whatsoever. Comparable to Placebo. Les Babacools. They were pretty cool, I even did some dancing despite of my dutiful job as stage guard :P Virgina Jetzt! No thanks. Not my stuff. Guarded them anyway. Some female stage sec seemed to like em and started dancing. :) Mediengruppe Telekommander YAY awesome stuff. Commodore meets consume criticismn. Had to guard the staitway up to the stage and had a brilliant side view at the two guys. Liked them really much. Telekommander! Between the last two bands I had to guard the rear entry for a while. A girl and her friend climbed over the fence and tried to outrun me and Volker. Played the hell of a run and catch game. We won :P. Luckily they were totally peaceful and nice. So it was easy and nice to bring em back out there. They had some strange green marker in their faces and looked stoned. Ah yes alas the rain surpised us and I had forgotten to pack a vest. Luckily I can give a Hooray to festival garbage sack rain suits. Had a yellow one. How stylish! Day 3: Again I had a wonderful night. Well Except for the last band, there was no band/music I was interested today. (Reggae, HipHop and some country cowboys). So I enjoyed myself lying in the sun writing a letter to a very good friend. Reading some in my book (Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash, really good book). Later I met some more friend who came for the last band today. You are already figuring what band it is, don't you? Tried some Poi with two friends. Hurt myself at the head and somewhere more down and then gave up. I don't think that I have any talent there... Though fire poi surly is impressive and wonderful to look at at night. So well here we are. They advanced. I appologized at my friends that I won't let my chance go seeing them directly in fron of them. And went off to the stage. As most people didn't know that my only shift was saturday and as they reckognized me from yesterday I could easily stand between them. Being stage secutrity again for Paradise Lost. They entered - left again - entered - left again- and finally stayed entered :P They were so awesome! They played two songs from Draconian Times (Hallowed Land, Last Time) and one from Once Second (once Second) my two favorite albums from them. I couldn't hold myself and dance between the unable to move crowded crowd and them. I just stopped to help all the stage divers to get down and back again. After Hallowed Land I again couldn't hold back entered the crowd from the side passage and stage dived myself being carried back to the stage reentering my "place" when the others helped me down. Boy they really played wonderful music. Their new songs are great too! So. The End. After several bonus songs they finally stopped. Throwing the drumsticks in the crowd. But not Gregor Mackintosh, he gave his Blackdrum (or whatever the guitar thing is called, I never played guitar so I don't know) to the 12 year old also pretending to be stage sec boy beneath me, who joined me several times this and last day. His mother is festival guard, so he really has backstage entrance. Anyway... after I told him to keep it sacred and never to gave it away to anyone I notcied my stupid alteroism and begged him to give it to me :P After I came to my senses again, 1 and a half hour later, he then gave it to me as a birthday present - though it wasnt my birthday, that is in january the 10th, don't you forget!. Yay i am now official and proud owner of the Paradise Lost Blackdrum or whatsoever of Gregor Mackintosh, that he used for their Gig in Passau. I'll make a scan later. It has Paradise Lost encarved on the one side and a golden tribal on the other. Satisfied and exhausted I went to the toilet for a (how we say in german) big deal. So I was sitting there enjoying the clean the toilet, when suddenly the voices of Paradise Lost approached and Nick is telling his collegues to take a quick shower before they go on. Oh my Im sitting in a toilet and Nick Holmes is taking a shower next to me smelling my bodiliy natural stench. That is something you don't live though every day. Nick Holmes has smelled my shit :P ! Ieieh! Well but the showers in the backstage toilet had now doors. I knew that from yesterday as I accidentially saw a girl coming out when I wanted to brush my teeths (immedeatly looking away and appologizing, she found it funny). Well so I couldn't withstand and had a look when I came out flushing my toilet. Well yes I saw Nick Holmes, the singer of Pardadise Lost naked. (For all female and gay readers, he really looks handsome! beleive me) Though his handsomeitey I had no thought about entering the shower and left all too early, too confused to make clear thoughts. That's it folks! Michael reporting live from the Passauer Pfingst Open-Air 2005 and from Nick's private shower cabin. Current Mood: excited (Comment on this)
Friday, May 6th, 2005
10:18 pm	Revolutionary 1. May The First of May, the day of the working class, maybe the concept "class" may be outdated, the day however isn't. I left my own town for good and went to Nuernberg (a bigger town in the north of mine) with some friends. May Day in Nuernberg is something special. In Nuernberg you experience something you can't in other towns. There are demos like in the other towns yes, but it is the people who take part. May Day always starts with two independent Demos, the one organized and mainly participated by Nuernberg's autonomous political youth groups (OA, Solid, youth Antifa, etc.) and the one by the trade unions plus party youth groups. I was on the first one. Now the special thing is that at a fixed point in the city the two demonstrations merge giving it a power beyond 3000 people. In friendship und understanding people from all ages from all origins from so many political views (with common denominators that make them go to the street on May Day) walk hand in hand. Nuernberg is one city with the most amazing integration I have ever seen. Ex-foreigners don't have to remain silent or stay quiet, they fully understand with all the other people of this town and organize themselves for events like the May Day or against facist gatherings. And so are the autonomous youth groups, feared and isloated in other cities, here they are accepted and viewed as as important, but also as friends. So it does not amaze anyone, that when some facists decided to hold their own May Day against forgeiner integration and against leftists and against any value that makes any sense to me, that all the people went together there and blocked them. Police was strong but they could not attack children, teachers, pupils, old men and women and all the other commited people. So they had but no choice to "transport" the Nazis underground by Subway and then give them a small place completely secured by lines of police somewhere else in the city. Of course this place was immedeatly surrounded by the Nuernberger again, screaming and making noice at a level that made the nazi gathering unhearable for every facist. What wondered me most, having experience from other cities, the in Nuernberg really all people of the city also stood in the first lines, not only somewhere far beyond in the back, SO apart from some stupid demonstrations of power police galdly remained unviolent, maybe parts to the fact that i think most policewomen/men are againt Nazis too. Well only bad thing was the weather - it was too nice - meaning too hot. We all fought us sweating thorugh the day suffering from sunstrokes. I have like sunburn everywhere. :/ Well but it was worth it. This one day the whole city belonged to the people. On May Day no matter where in Nuernberg you went, there were friendly demonstrants of one kind or anotrher everywhere. The friendship between them that i mentioned also menas that they also just talk to you and with each other. There are few boundaries between them though all the differences the trained eye notices that they all are the same. They see the political injustice and want to fight it on their own ways coming together to do so and May the first. Michael, reporting live from the Nuernberg streets Current Mood: exhausted (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, April 22nd, 2005
10:58 pm	Hunted by the police I have to admit this incident was exactly one week ago, but im a lazy in writing down my daily absorbing adventures. Well i was out for dancing. Not too long though, cause the music was really bad. So i decided to get myself home.... by bike. What you need to know about my bike: - front and back brakes inoperable (gladly i still have backpedal brake) - no light - pretty rusty chain - gear change defect and so on Like this i had begun my journey home, when half way there a police car T-crossed my way. They surley saw me. Thus i got afraid they would punish me for my good ol'bike. I got down and waited what they were going to do. They drove on. Gladly I did the same, when they suddenly - almost out of sight - started to turn. Hurriedly I stopped thinking and started acting. I left the main road and took tiny dark ways back to my Appartmentblock. Gladly missing a light they could not pursue me due to the cloaking darkness. Happily home I got of my bike and wanted to lock it just when the police car stopped at the entrance of the Appartmentblock approach. Yikes i screamed jumped over my bike towards the door opended it in a real hurry and stormed to my appartement door leaving the lights off - not to leave a trace. Cloaked in Darkness i opened my door, entered my room, closed the door, locked it and sat down. Phew I outran them, at least so i thought. Out of mere paraonia I luckily left the lights off, except for my computer monitor. Checking my emails I almost got an heartattack when the police car reemerged at my window site. This site contains only the Appartmentblock's parking lot and nothing else. YIKES i screamed - turned off the monitor - jumped into my bed - and hid below my blanket. Sporadically I risked a glance out of the blanekt towards the window, they really started to look into the windows! Argh! After 5 minutes of frightening and horror they left the parking site for good. Slowly I emerged from my bed and had to gather myself again. Were they really after me? But who else would they have been after? And it makes totally sense, I thought. If you loose a bike, that you were hunting so close to an Appartmentblock mainly inhabited by students, chances to get the person there are high. And at my window site there really is nothing but the parking lot for this block. Nothing else of interest. Well they had to have been after me, there no other explanition. Sometimes I think the police has too much time, hunting a innocent biker through all the city and lure for him at his house looking through all the windows like perverts.... Well I'm sure glad thats over with. I brought my bike to the mechanic next monday.... Current Mood: confused (Comment on this)