Clau heading to Brazil

Clau's heading home to Brazil - her sister just had a baby boy and her grandmother is having a 90th birthday party, both of which are good occasions for heading over there. Unfortunately, since I'm in the middle of a project and thought I was going to have to travel, I'm not going with her, so I get to stay in Munich by myself :( But, truthfully it's probably a good thing I can't go, since I would just be sitting miserable in Brazil working like crazy. Still, I'm awfully envious of her...

Word of the day

Philips screwdriver = Kreuzschlitzschraubendreher
Unfortunately the Germans are far too fond of making very large words.
Follow-up: upon discussing this with a colleague, it turns out that Schraubendreher is an old fogey word - the actual word is Kreuzschlitzschraubendzieher - not much easier...

Sick - and more German fun

So, I got the bug that's been going around; seems that everybody here is under the weather, and truthfully I haven't been sick in a while, so I was due. Anyway, as always, I can't get the last bit of sinus action to calm down, so I figured I'd get some aspirin. For anyone who needs to get aspirin in Germany, a few pointers:
1) Anything that could be called a drug (including aspirin, but not including, for example, vitamin C) can only be sold at a pharmacy in Germany. They actually have "drug stores" here, which are just like drug stores in the U.S., minus the actual drugs. If you need to pick up some deodorant and a birthday card, though, that's the place to go.
2) All drugs must be purchased via the pharmacist - everything is behind the counter. I don't really have a problem with this, except that for some reason the pharmacy was packed with sick people, and even though I'm hacking and sneezing just like everyone else, I still don't like people hacking and sneezing in close proximity to me; what if they have a different strain of the cold than I do, and we're just making each other sick?
3) Pharmacies have pretty limited opening hours, just like everything else. Apparently a couple stay open 24 hours and they have some kind of unpredictable schedule, so if you need to find out what pharmacy is open at night or on a Sunday, you need to check the paper for the announcement of what pharmacy is open at night right now. Generally, the central train station is a good bet when you need something at off hours, because it'll probably be there, or else you can try to go to the information folks and ask. If it's like 12am, though, you're SOL - try to get sick during the daytime if you can.
4) "Aspirin" is the brand name for Bayer aspirin. A small package of 20 tablets costs about5-7 Euro. What you want is "Acetylsalicylsaeure", which is the actual ingredient. Thankfully in my case, I was able to ask for "generic Aspirin" and I got what I needed, which cost about €2.50 for 30 tablets (still pricey but cheaper than the name brand)
5) For some reason aspirin comes in 500mg tablets. I was about to take 3 or 4 but checked the intertubes just to be safe first. Caveat emptor!

Moral of the story - when you visit from the U.S., bring lots of aspirin, and leave some at my place.

About time

I seem to have a knack for coming in 2nd place in the $3 KO battle on full tilt. Finally, I made it.
Yes, admittedly it's small, but I just don't have the time or dedication to get good enough to play with the big boys. For example, this little SNG took just over 2 hours...

Cool article

Just saw this article on the buffalo beast, some very choice quotes here:
About John McCain: "McCain burned up all the credibility he had stored up...and he still wound up a failed Faust even the Devil didn’t want."
About Sarah Palin: "If you want to know why the rest of the world is scared of Americans, consider the fact that after two terms of disastrous rule by a small-minded ignoramus, 46% of us apparently thought the problem was that he wasn’t quite stupid enough."
On Elliot Spitzer: "Like every paragon of public ethics, he was in private a mere pervert. That he might have been a decent governor for a state that badly needed one is just one more reason to hate him."

Pretty amusing stuff - they also skewer their fair share of liberals, but of course the conservative folks get the top prizes...

My food is too hot

I accidentally left a bowl of lentils in the microwave too long (everything in this apartment is cheapo - we have a pulse phone! - so no digital microwave, just a timer handle) and now it's ridiculously hot. Lentils, as you probably know, have a remarkably high specific heat, so now I have to wait about 20 minutes to eat them. Which makes me wonder; we've had the microwave oven for about 25 years now - why no inverse device? I mean, I understand that the physics involved in making something colder would be a lot trickier than making them hotter, but seriously - I mean, we put a man on the moon 40 years ago, and I still have to wait for the atmosphere to cool off my lentils?
Not that it takes that long - it's been below freezing for what feels like forever now. It's even too cold to store beer outside! Lat Sunday we went out with about 4 layers, and many parts of me were still freezing. I could really go for some summer right about now...

Basel for the holidays

We're visiting our friends Fabienne and Miguel for the New Year - right now Basel is rainy and dreary, so there's going to be lots of indoor time.
Overall, Christmas was nice - Clau and I had a very mellow time just cooking, eating, and drinking. I don't think I would want to do it every Christmas - generally I like having people around - but I enjoyed it one time. We read lots of books and generally were incredibly lazy people.
Not sure what we're going to be doing for the next few days, but it should be a nice time. Probably just going to hang around, talk, maybe play some games or cards or whatever, poke around on the Internet, etc. A nice, lazy end of the year to cap off a nice, lazy holiday...

Germans at mealtime

One other thing I forgot to mention - Germans have what seems to me to be an odd eating schedule. They eat a small breakfast, a GIANT lunch, and a small dinner. When I say a giant lunch, I'm not kidding - I am generally incapable of putting away as much food in one sitting as they consume at lunch. One time we decided to get pizza for lunch, and each person ate an entire pizza - an entire pizza! I ate my pizza along with everyone else, then tried to fight the oncoming coma.
Also, apparently they can drink a lot more than I can, as evidenced by my still lack of ability to function, two days later, after the holiday party. The funny part is, everyone kept talking about how the night ended really early this time (I left at midnight and I was definitely in the first third of people to leave). They blamed it on the poor drinking planning - the party committee kept shoving alcohol down our throats, so that the pattern went: gluehwein, beer, schnapps, beer, champagne, wine, schnapps, beer, stumble home (well, that was my pattern anyway). Simply a recipe for disaster if you ask me (and it would also explain my having the worst hangover I've had in years, from which I am still not recovered). I did, however, have a great time and spent a lot of time talking to one of the facilities guys, who speaks only slightly more English than my German. A lot of time this is the foreign guy version of the one-night-stand; you meet up with him the next day and wonder how on earth you communicated at all; it's not like you regret it or anything, but it's not something you would normally do, and it's a little awkward the next day trying to make small talk. I guess the inhibitions that alcohol removes include shyness about trying to speak another language.

Happy morning

I am completely mesmerized by this Folger's viral ad campaign. The song and imagery has been stuck in my head for the better part of a week.




Truthfully, I think that web-only ads are a great idea; you can get a little more edgy, you don't have to worry about making it exactly 30 seconds long, and (if done right), you can get a lot of viewership with relatively little investment. Since I work in media, I think about this kind of thing a lot.

More German observations / lessons / stories

1) Germans are generally very polite in conversations; they wait until a person has finished speaking before saying anything. They also think before they speak - noticably; there may be up to five or ten seconds of dead silence in a conversation while a participant thinks of what he is going to say. This is especially noticeable in English, which makes me wonder if they're thinking the entire sentence through in their heads, finally hitting that final verb, then translating it into English where you actually say what action is taking place before describing its effect and object. Or, maybe that's just me.
At any rate, this is a very difficult pace for me to get into - I work with a bunch of type-A personalities, particularly my boss, and a typical work conference for me has absolutely zero silence in it. In fact, it's extremely rare for someone to finish an entire train of thought in a meeting with my colleagues, because usually folks get cut off. It used to bother me a lot, since I'm more of a "listen to everything, formulate theory, and then share my genius" type of person, which doesn't really work - you sort of have to do run-time compilation, if you get my drift.
Unfortunately, this style of conversation carries over into my personal life, which is considered very rude over here. Just as Jerry Lewis is a genius in France, I'm an asshole in Germany.

2) Renting an apartment is extremely difficult. Of course, I expect that this is just Munich, given the very high population density. At first, Clau and I thought that our relatively high budget would exempt us from the common problems, but it turns out that it doesn't; for one thing, although right now we've got a high DINKS income, neither one of us wants our apartment budget to be based on that - we aimed for a price that would allow one of us to quit working (or be laid off, given the current global economy) and still have a halfway decent life (i.e. no wining and dining, but at least not eating spaghetti with butter and salt every night). This decision was also inspired in part by a realization that great, slightly more expensive apartments are shockingly rare - it turned out that about 80% of the apartments we looked at were the same as the cheaper apartments, but the landlord had simply raised the rent to attract a better class of tenant. Personally, I think that's idiotic, unless the landlord was willing to bring the rent down to market value after having attracted said better class of tenant (and none of them were willing to even budge on the rent).
So, after this realization and decision, Clau and I downgraded ourselves to "normal people" status and started looking at cheaper apartments. We probably visited 15 or 20 apartments, and every single one of them had some problem that was either a complete deal-breaker, or else was bad enough to make us wonder if we could live with it for a while (needless to say, considering the tremendous pain and expense involved in renting an apartment, it's not something you want to do frequently). One apartment was perfect but too dark (Clau needs light or she gets claustraphobic), multiple apartments were on a top floor and had slanted ceilings (I get claustraphobic), two apartments had added a bathtub where a standing shower would have made a lot more sense (one apartment even had the boiler bolted about 3 feet over the bathtub! How would you like to have to shower right next to that every morning?). And so on and so forth; dead neighborhood, 4th floor walk-up, horrible layout, minuscule Manhattan-style kitchen, etc. And, of course, a plethora of apartments that were perfect except that the bedroom was not big enough to accomidate our decidedly un-European California King bed.
Last week, we finally found one that we could live with. It has problems: squeaky original floors, only one bathroom (well, cumulatively - there's no toilet in the bathroom, and the toilet is in a tiny closet on the other side of the apartment), only one bedroom (although the dining room could become an office / guest room), smallish kitchen, no parking. But, all of these were problems we could live with.
So, after telling the broker (oh yeah, did I mention that every apartment has to be rented through a broker, and the TENANT pays the broker's fee?) that we wanted the apartment, we had to fill out an application that stopped just short of a DNA profile, then we had to be interviewed by the owners, then await their decision. The good news is that they picked us (and considering the fact that we both just started two-year, open-ended employment contracts, there really wasn't anything against us other than the fact that we're immigrants), so right now we have a tentative move-in date of Mar 1. We'll talk with the current tenant and see if he's willing to move out earlier, but I suspect we will have to wait until Mar 1. Still, we're pretty psyched.

3) Did I say Germans were polite? Generally they are, but there's an exception: the subway. They have NO concept of efficiency or queuing - it's absolutely ridiculous how they shove past one another in this mad rush to get on and off the train. At least in NYC there's an unwritten rule about that - let people off the train, then go on. In fact, I often take out my aggression on folks breaking this rule - I come out that train like a linebacker. In Munich, they just all go into a mad scrum. And yet, in spite of all this, the subway runs like clockwork.

4) Being employed here is awesome; mandatory (and enforced!) 40-hour work week, subsidized lunches, employment contract, 6 weeks of paid vacation per year, etc. etc. Unfortunately, since I still work with New York, I don't really get the benefit of most of this, but it's good to know that if I go somewhere else, I'll be treated nice.

I'm sure there are more words of wisdom to be shared - I'll post them as they occur to me.

Apartments part deux

We have looked at quite a few apartments at this point, and unfortunately it seems to be impossible to find what we want. We have, however, found an apartment that's close enough where we can both live with it. Fingers crossed!

Netflix comments

Obviously, I had to cancel my Netflix membership before leaving. At the end of cancelling your membership, they have a section of "please let us know your reason for leaving", which is all radio buttons. Oddly enough, there's no "I'm moving outside of the coverage area" button, nor is there a text box for "other". There's also no area to put in comments. I wanted to leave a parting remark saying "I absolutely love your service and I'll miss it", but there was no place to do that. Weird.

Apartments

So, today we go see our first set of apartments - Clau and I are looking toward the upper end of the price range for apartments, and theoretically that means that we won't be fighting the hordes for the space (if you're looking for a cheap studio or 1-bedroom, expect to be competing with a big crowd - 2-bedroom, not so much).
Yeah, that's right - 2 bedrooms! Count 'em - 1, 2. That means that guests (when we eventually have some) will not have to sleep in our living room. If we go really fancy we may even end up w/ two bathrooms, although this is supposedly kinda rare in Munich.

What else - the new office is sweet - I'm determined to take pictures but have no idea where I put the charger for the camera (stupid!). There's an espresso machine (not in my personal office, per se, but at least it's a quick skip from here to the kitchen) and Diet Coke on tap. Unfortunately that means I need to develop caffeine discipline, which is something I never had to worry much about before.

Went out drinking Saturday night - it didn't end particularly well - I ended up drinking way too much beer (still getting the hang of the German brew), and Clau and I ended up almost totally stranded - she was limping along really badly (her knee is still far from healed) and it was seriously freezing outside. So, you had a foreign couple, me leaning on her for stability, her leaning on me for support, hobbling along at about 1mph in the wind and snow - we ended up taking the tram and the subway, then a cab for the last leg home. Total travel time about 1 hour, total distance covered was about 4 miles. The general rule here is that if you're going to be out past 2am, be prepared to shovel out mucho dinero for a cab home (and I'm talking like 30 Euros for a 20-minute cab ride) - if you want to take the subway, better make 1:30 or so your last call. At least, if you're determined, you can still live it up in town after hours - it's not like California where you have to stop drinking because it's the law.

Well, I was close...

So, although nobody pointed it out to me, I found out in another context that the word for "quarter" is "Viertel" - which, to me, sounds exactly like "vittle" - or "victual" for you educated folks.

Things I am learning in Germany (in no particular order)

1) I _think_ the German word for "a quarter of a loaf of bread" is "vittel" - I learned it at the bakery, but unfortunately I have a terrible memory for words when I don't see them in writing - in fact the only way for me to really memorize them without seeing them in writing is to imagine the written word over and over in my head. Anyway, after learning this word I tried to verify it online, but cannot find a single instance of it. I shall have to verify it again, but I'm reticent to do so since the woman at the bakery terrifies me - she's large and menacing and has no patience for the local village idiot foreigner.
2) Just like it's not the heat, it's the humidity, it's not the cold - it's the humidity. It's been slightly above freezing here with about 90% humidity, and man is it cold - it's a horrible, pentrating cold that you can't seem to keep out.
3) IP phones ROCK! I have an IP phone that's tied into 30 Rock, so it's like I have a 30 Rock number - I can just dial extensions to talk to folks in 30 Rock, plus I can call the U.S., people can call my 212 number, and (most importantly) I can call 1-800 numbers, which comes up a lot more often than you might think (like, for example, conference calls). I'm going to see if it works in my office here, but I doubt it will, which means I'll have to find another solution for conference calling. You would think that GE would have international conference numbers, but whatever...
4) I missed Clau a lot - at one point she was offered a six-month assignment, and we even considered it, which seems foolish now.
5) Moving to a foreign country is a lot different from visiting it. For example, even though as a tourist you get the idea that everybody speaks English, you find out that it just isn't so when you move here (although thankfully everyone in my office speaks English). Also, things that go wrong in normal life can be a lot more exasperating than things that go wrong when on vacation; what might end up as a fun story from visiting a place ends up being an exasperating experience when you live there.

As an example of #5, Claudia tripped while walking up the stairs to the apartment last night and banged her knee up pretty bad. We thought it would be better by morning, but it was even worse and she was in a lot of pain. I went to the pharmacy in search of some Arnica or Ben-Gay, and it was a pretty frustrating experience. I ended up getting an ointment, but of course it didn't help right away, and she was in no shape to go to work. She called her boss, who told her she should go to the nearby clinic and get the knee checked out. We don't have insurance (yet), and we decided that even though we would have to pay for everything out of pocket, we should still go. Needless to say, going to the urgent care was an adventure, and everybody there was very nice (although there were a lot of folks who didn't speak English). She got X-rays and had an intern check out her leg, who thought it was OK, but wanted to have the chief of medicine look at it just to be sure. We waited for a good hour for the chief, but it was almost worth it; he had a giant flock of students around him watching his every move. I'm guessing that Claudia's condition was an interesting case for them, and they all wanted to see how the boss would determine if there was anything seriously wrong with her knee, or if it was just banged up. He poked at her, made her do a couple of things and kept asking "does that hurt?", to which most times the answer was "no, not especially". Finally, he finished it by saying to his interns (as best I could gather) "if she can do this, this and this, then she's OK and it's just a very bad hit, which will heal over time." He then grabbed her knee and pressed on it to emphasize his point - Claudia screamed "WOW! THAT HURTS!", to which he replied "Yes, I know." Afterwards, he left with his entourage minus the intern who had treated Clau, who then wrapped up her leg in a bandage to immobilize it and told her to keep it on for a day or two.
The point of this story is not to demostrate what a dick the chief was (because he actually was rather nice, although obviously busy), but really what good care Claudia received. And, for those who are curious, the total bill including the X-rays was about 100 Euros. And, to further emphasize the difference in culture, when we first got to the clinic we discovered that Claudia's boss had called the clinic ahead of time to describe what had happened and to let them know that a foreigner would be coming to see them. After we got back home, Claudia called her boss, who told her to take the day off tomorrow to ensure that the leg would heal. That's definitely different from New York!
I'll write about my new office in another post, but suffice it to say it's pretty neat - everyone there is generally a bit younger and relatively relaxed. I found out that I get meal vouchers for lunch (which apparantly is normal, either that or else places will have a subsidized cafeteria) and I actually got a real office, and it's very swanky (I'll post pictures when I get a chance). The office is temporary, though - I'll be moving soon enough, although hopefully I can convince them I'm important enough to warrant a similarly swanky location after we're all done moving around.

--Nate

Almost gone

Movers came and spent all day yesterday packing all our crap - I watched it go and realized that yes, this is in fact happening.

On another note - why are we not getting more freaked out about this? I mean, I think that if in NYC you started having severed feet just showing up, people might be a little concerned. Especially considering that they're all in shoes, so it's not like these are drowned swimmers. I'm sure there's a CSI episode in there somewhere...

--Nate

I admit it

I got a little teary last night. We were watching the results and the victory sort of came out of nowhere - I mean, we knew which way it was going, but on NBC news (come on, where else would I be watching it?) Obama went straight from 207 to a lock. I immediately shuffled down the street to NewsCorp HQ and confirmed the news (hey, if Fox News admits it, then it's done!), then went back to Channel 4 (local bar right by 30 Rock) to let them know.
I was so overcome by emotion, and I couldn't place it. After a few minutes, it hit me; I was actually proud of my country. I can't remember the last time I felt that way - it was certainly long enough ago that the emotion was completely foreign to me. It was, in fact, the antithesis of my emotions after the 2004 election, and judging by the (happy) pandemonium in the city, I wasn't the only one feeling that way.
I'm proud that we finally voted for the right guy. I'm proud that we've elected a black president, that we've elected an intelligent president, and that it wasn't even a close contest. When I move to Germany, I won't be ashamed to be American, because at long last it looks like we've seen the error of our ways and will at long last be on the right track.
I proceded to get absolutely smashed at the bar last night. The vibe was perfect, everyone was happy, some people were crying, overcome with the same emotion that I was feeling, and I just wanted it to last forever. I only wish my wife could have been there with me.
I woke up this morning about 10 minutes before my 8am conference call. I have a hell of a hangover, but it was absolutely worth it. If I could live that night over again, I wouldn't change a thing.

Liquid diet (or, fun with Eliana)

So, the stories of miscommunications and games with the cleaning lady are legendary. She was supposed to come by last Friday, so on Friday morning I did the pre-Eliana-visit routine of straightening up as best as I can, and (more importantly) hiding the essential items that I'll need for the next week; if I don't hide stuff, she will.
Now, one part of the German transition is that I can't take any food with me, so I decided it would be a good idea to start getting rid of stuff; I took stock of the kitchen and decided that, although the freezer and pantry still had a lot of stuff that looked viable and tasty, the refrigerator was about 40% condiments, 20% booze, 15% rotten food, and about 5% non-booze stuff that I actually wanted. I took the liberty of putting all of the stuff to be kept on the top shelf of the fridge, then wrote Eliana a note saying I wanted to start getting rid of my food, and could she please throw out all the food beneath the jar of water?
Later that day, Eliana called me and said she was sick, and would I mind if she came by on Monday? That coincided nicely with an impromptu get-together that I hosted on Saturday, so I thought it was optimal.
On Sunday, I had a particularly nasty (and, I thought, somewhat undeserved) hangover, and cooked myself a massive Mac & Cheese with everything from the pantry that looked like it might go well with Mac & Cheese. The resulting glop was delicious and huge - I ate about half of it, then put the other half in a tupperware, taking care to place it on the top shelf, above the jar of water.
So, you can guess where this is going: I came home today, opened the refrigerator in anticipation of my M&C glop (cuz you know that shit is even better when reheated the second day), and saw this. Horrors!
Now, of course I can point out the obvious - she somehow interpreted "can you please throw away all the food below the water jug in the refrigerator" as "please throw away all food in the apartment". Perhaps my Portuguese is worse than I thought - remind me to NEVER hire a Brazilian exterminator, lest I inadvertently have all the pets on our block executed.
What I find more curious, however, is what she opted to leave behind:

• All the booze (which was kind of her)
• The jar of water (which, remember, was meant to be used as a reference marker for what should be kept and what should be tossed). Note that the jar of water is in the same place I left it.
  
• Claudia's cold mask (in the freezer, useful for administering or relieving a headache)
• A half-eaten pint of Haagen-Dazs acai berry sorbet
• A box of durian popsicles. Words cannot describe the foulness that is durian. Many people have their own particularly colorful descriptions - the image it brings forth to my mind is a sweet Maui onion that has been forgotten in a gym locker, in a tropical place, surrounded by sweaty gym socks, and left there for a couple of months. There's definitely a sweetness and a hint that maybe there could have been something good here at one point, but it's overwhelmed by the funk. Anyway, continuing the list...
• A package of hot dog rolls. I'm actually unsure as to where these came from - I'm relatively sure it wasn't the refrigerator, but that's where they are now
• A small chunk of goiabada (a Brazilian sweet made from guava - it's kind of like a really, really think fruit roll-up). I should note that there was also an unopened package of goiabada in the side shelf of the fridge which is gone. That chunk of goiabada has been in the fridge since (I think) the last time Clau and I went to Brazil, which I believe was for Christmas last year. Apparantly it had been there for so long that Eliana thought it was part of the fridge, or perhaps a particularly colorful accessory.

So, the big question now: what do I order for dinner? I'm thinking burger.

Sooo tired

Haven't really slept much in the last five days or so - between flying to Oakland, the soon-to-be-legendary trip to Reno, Cora screaming through the night, and the redeye back to NYC, I'm working on an average of 4 hours or so per night. This is one of the things that makes me wonder if I'm cut out to be a parent - I can barely take care of myself with this little sleep, how could I possible take care of someone else?
For me, when I'm working on serious sleep deprivation it's very similar to being sick - my throat hurts, I feel crappy, and my head feels like it's full of syrup. Hopefully I'm just really tired, because I really don't have time to be sick.
To AA's credit, the flight from SFO to JFK was 100% sold out (oversold, in fact), so there was no way a pleb like me was getting an upgrade. All things considered, though, it wasn't that bad; we left on time, arrived on time, and I was so tired that I slept for almost 3 hours of the 5 1/2-hour flight, so to me it felt like a pretty short one. Combined with my PSP and Musicophilia, it was actually relatively painless. Getting through today, on the other hand, is another thing entirely...

Rockbox

So, I recently bought a new Sansa mp3 player - they're all over woot all the time. Overall not a very good portable - for example, I accidentally crushed my last one after sitting on it - but after seeing that the new version of Rockbox had come out, I just had to get a replacement - so, $40 on buy.com, a small amount of elbow grease, and now I have a cheapo 6GB media player that supports just about every media format I use (and that's good, because I have lots of AAC, OGG, WMA, and FLAC lying around). Seriously sweet.