the world has turned and left me here

punks, the 80s, and the holy trinity

This weekend was a bit crazy. On Saturday night we went to Kunstpark Ost, the Munich dance club section, and had a rip-roaring good time. You could tell you were getting close to the place when it seemed like one out of every five people you passed had a red mohawk. Holger wasn't as impressed with the freaks as I was--he thought they were "designer punks." And I was thinking, would I know a designer punk from an authentic one? It reminded me of my junior high school days when we used to talk about bands, and this one guy would always say "yeah, they're sold-out" if it was a band that more than five people had actually heard of. Back then, I thought Green Day was the bomb, and his strident assertion that they were sold-out befuddled my poor impressionable brain. Now I just think it must be tough to be a punk, having to constantly deny the charge of being a sell-out or a designer-punk. They probably spend every waking hour thinking about how to keep things real and original-like.

I guess there was one big disappointment for the evening, and this was that yes, the Germans are in fact still in love with the 80s. You wouldn't know it from watching MTV (but that stuff's mostly imported anyway). All my roommates agreed when the question was put to them that the 80s were a cool decade with cool pop music, so that I then left, saddened and disillusioned with life, and threw myself into the path of an oncoming truck.

But I survived and went to Kunstpark Ost that evening, being the hardy American-type that I am. And I even danced to German 80s pop in a discotheque (did I just admit this?). Finally, I've found a country where, on the average, people dance worse than I do. Matt, Mark, the indefatigable Norman, Holger and his lately-arrived girlfriend Maren were present. A good time was had by all. When we got back at 2 I was falling asleep standing up, as the 1 hour of sleep on Saturday morning was starting to hit me.

And then today I went to my first beer garden with Mark and Claudia. I ordered a Mass (= 1 liter of beer in a huge freakin' glass) and put it away without any trouble. In the sky there were three clouds: one obscured the late afternoon sun and had a silver lining, another was a nebulous thing from which the incident rays fanned out like in a religious painting, and the third was a huge rolling cumulous that you could watch bubble up time-lapse-photography style. These three stood in a row like some kind of weird alignment of the planets, Jupiter-Venus-Mars. Father Son and Holy Ghost.

Afterwards we went to have some ice cream at an Italian ice cream shop, and sat outside talking about the older and younger generations in Germany, which seems to be a favorite topic of the younger generation (and probably the older too), though they obviously don't see eye to eye on a lot of things. We raced our bikes home--I had to lay down for a while to keep the old stomach in check.

if you like potatos, say ho!

"If you like potatos, say ho! If you like grapes, lemme here you say hhhhhhhhhhhoooooo!"

"We like quiet. Quiet please."

Alrighty-then. It is a Munich morning and I have just pulled an all-nighter, for no good reason other than that my brain would not stop. Every once and a while it seems like I need to do this to clean out the old brainpan. Guess I kind of let work follow me home a bit (my first mistake) and then I got to thinking about XML and XSLT (my second mistake). And the rest is history.

So I grabbed my trusty frisbee and went to toss it around on the soccer field at about 5:45 am, just to cap the night off. I wonder if the sight of an American throwing around a frisbee by himself at 5:45 in the morning freaked out some German brainpans as they drove past. I certainly hope so, because there's nothing as lonely as an incommunicable disease.

On that note, my German is finally starting to come along, ever since Norman told all my colleagues at work to speak German to me rather than English. And he's right, I should be speaking German, not relying on others to know English.

A word or two about Norman. We share the same room with 3 or 4 other interns, and he's been really cool to me, kindly imparting his knowledge of German obscenties and so forth. Holger calls him my "teacher" and he kind of is. He seems older than me, maybe 25 or thereabouts, wears loud mis-matched shirts and shorts and is a total riot to talk to. But then once we had a really good serious conversation--he and the French intern Florent and I--about Europeans flipping out over genetically engineered food and mad-cow disease etc.

This led to the common agreement that things would not change unless people started demanding quality over quantity. Although I'm still skeptical of all this food paranoia, the Europeans do seem to be a little ahead of the game by beginning to demand quality. That's a first step. If we're content to eat Big Macs, to eat food because it's fast, and refuse to pay a little extra in order to get quality food that comes from a known origin like the farmer next door, favoring the feedlots and a forest of supply-chain middlemen, we as consumers are sending an economic message to producers that says "I don't care what I shove down my gullet." Producers hear this, and know they can safely ignore how good it is and instead concentrate only on how much. Quantity. Mass-production, friends.

So, to reiterate, if you like potatos from the guy next door, say ho!

a walk in the forest

Let's go for a walk in the forest nearby Startlodge. Here's the entrance. Okay, here's one entrance--there are many. Alright, you can go in some other way if my tour guide tone of voice is getting on your nerves. But if you stick with me and my annoying tour guide tone of voice, you won't get lost. Promise.

"Won't get lost, eh?" Hold on, we're not lost yet. You're never lost if you know which way is north, as I always say. See the light streaming in from the left? That's north.

Right. Just kidding, that was actually west, and here's what it looks like if you turn around a little farther along.

Where there are no trails, you'll see ferns growing everywhere. Here's a more rigorous formulation of fern.

At last, we're out. Well, somewhat. Actually, if you keep going along that path you'll be going for a while before you see signs of civilization again. I couldn't find the way out so I just turned around and went back the way I came.

We're out. Dig that lonely little cloud over there.

diver

Here's the approach to Siemens. Even though I was quite a ways away when I took this, you still can't see the entire thing. To give you an idea of just how big this thing is (since for some reason I seem to be determined to impress upon you a sense of largeness, so start getting impressed already), I walked out on the wrong side one day and it took me 15 minutes of skirting the perimeter to get back to my bike. In the picture you can see poppies in the foreground. I was wowed by them the first couple times, but since then have seen open fields that are nothing but poppy-red dabs of paint, poppies, poppiesssssss, my pretty, cackle cackle.

Ahem. Discovered the forest nearby, and I mean forest in the strictest sense of the word. I was riding the infertilizer. My launchpad was this dome hill in the middle of a children's playground, about 10 feet high. The sign by the playground had a crossed-out picture of pretty much everything interesting you could imagine yourself doing in this little playground, and said something about only allowing children under 14, but in the moment I felt about 14, and this was a launch, okay? From on top of this thing I got some pretty good speed shooting into the forest. Once inside it was dark, with tall, branchless pine trunks all around but a thick canopy above. Pine needles on the ground, fern, moss. Root tangles made the ride jittery in places. Then there was this transition in which things suddenly went from somewhat dark to spooky-movie dark, and the trees seemed to close in, and I started having to duck branches. I thought, turn back you fool, can't you hear the ominous background music and see it all coming?

But I got out of there okay. There were lots of paths leading in all directions. Eventually I found myself on the edge of the forest again, with a green field on my left. It was getting towards dusk (ah late summer days). Then I noticed some deer in the field up ahead, perking up at the sound of my bike on gravel. Or were they big rabbits? I couldn't tell, my eyes were pretty blurry from the fast ride, so I decided to slowly get closer. It turned out they were deer, mutant dwarf deer, couldn't have been much more than half the size of whitetails. I threw caution by the wayside and raced past them while they just stared, motionless, about 20 feet away, their heads pivoting slowly. Failed to make an impression apparently.

It's like this: during the day, at work, I sink deeper and deeper into this (stupor?) (hypnotic state?) frame of mind in which only me and my code, only the internal monologue and the program I'm working on coexist. In the evening, after work, I try to swim back to the surface. To actually taste food again and not be thinking something like "did I remember to handle bottom-up bitmaps?" and chewing but not really tasting. To talk to people, look them in the eye, think about them as people and not just a bundle of electromagnetic and acoustic stimuli that I must respond to, but are distracting me from my work at the moment. To feel things. It is this swim-to-the-bottom, float-to-the-surface oscillation that has become the daily way for me. My brain has inertia and I can't just pop out of one world and into another, it takes time. (To quote Jonas, I can't simply "close the drawer.")

And right now, sitting around writing this, I'm sinking in again. Gasp...up!

yours truly

As you can see, I got my NexiCam today! I also ordered a belt-strap carrying case, so now I'm an Ipaq-slinging geek. Hey now, bub, don't make me use this thing on you...

Fedex wouldn't deliver to me unless I was around to sign and fork over a ridiculous amount for the customs duty and techno-gadget tax. And, like every other business in Germany, they took the weekend off. The long and short of it was that I had to ride home from work today to wait around for it. Picked a crappy day to make the bike trip 4 times, too, as this morning was a gray drizzly one. Came into work dripping like a wet dog. The suits in the yellow elevator did not look pleased to be sharing the space with this soggy free-form hooligan (he's a programmer, no doubt about it) and carefully maneuvered around me as they got off.

Tomorrow, hopefully, I'll be able to put the camera to the test. Pictures--of the others in Startlodge, probably--are on their way.

what's the frequency, kenneth?

A bizarre but true thing that happened to Dan Rather.

no greater disdain

Performed the Saturday thing and went to Munich. Yesterday was a nasty rainy day, but the sun is shining today, cooperating with my plans. The S-Bahn into Munich races through green countryside and village scenes until gradually things turn slum, every flat surface getting graffitied over, and then finally it has had enough and plunges underground and stays there, beneath the streets of Munich. There is a transitional period from countryside to city in which brightly graffitied walls peek out from behind layers of trees and hanging vines, like some sort of ancient Mayan ruins.

I was alone this time and wandered off course into the Turkish part of town. But after a while I started finding the places I was after, clothing stores, second-hand stores, shoes stores, etc. No Lamborghinis or Versaces this time. Saw a cool pair of bright red shoes for only 25 Euros. Tried them on, hmmmed, walked around in them, left the store, came back. They were cool, but a bit Ronald-McDonald, and after a while I decided I would get a pair of purplish Kangaroos which were a little more subdued. But they didn't have it in a size large enough for my big American feet so I'll have to find them elsewhere.

Moving on, I found a righteous pair of orange-lensed sunglasses for 5 Euros and snapped those right up. They will be my inside sunglasses, since it seems like my contacts give me terrible problems if I don't shield my eyes somehow. Especially when programming...I've taken to wearing glasses all the time at work now because it got so bad.

There was a neat poster shop near the Hauptbanhof with lots of art posters. I had decided I would start decorating my room a little, as it looks like a monk's cell or something. It is also the smallest room of the 7 in Startlodge. Before I came, a Korean lived in this room, and it's just the kind of cell a Korean guy would not mind living in.

By this time I was getting pretty hungry. I ended up breaking down in front of a self-proclaimed "Tex-Mex" place, and got myself an enormous cheeseburger. This thing was epic. It had everything in it, and then some other stuff like chili peppers and cucumbers and what-not. It was a dribbling mess, falling apart as I ate it, just the way they should be. At this point two blonde American sorority girls walk in this little joint, no doubt attracted to the words "Tex-Mex" like moths to a porch light, and ordered tacos. They didn't make any attempt to ask the lady behind the counter if she spoke English, they just started right in with it and expected that they would be understood.

They left, and I decided to catch up with them. Indeed, they were Americans as I had guessed, two girls from Boston touring Europe after graduating from college. I had't talked to an American in three weeks. Back home cute sorority girl-types make me nervous anyway, and with these two it was even worse; I was a bumbling fool and they eventually went off in another direction.

What did we have in common anyway? These two were tourists, just barely skimming the surface, and I a person who has plunged in head-first by comparison. The only German word they knew was "Danke." Of all things, "thank you," as if they had ever once said those words in English and actually meant it. Watching them order their damn tacos made me feel guilty, guilty to be an American over here and inflicting my native tongue on people, but they probably didn't think a thing of it. They were from the mightiest nation in the world, and they were ::::sorority girls::::. I cannot imagine any greater display of disdain, of utter contempt.

Well I suppose that's what I get for breaking down and having a cheeseburger. Next time I won't give in to my weakness.

But enough of this, the day is just beginning. It is still sunny, so I think I'll take my bike for a ride out in the country. Tonight the few of us Startlodgers who are around for the weekend are going to the pubs in Munich. A busy day!

the existence of inverses

The rest of the world could be into heavy drug use, for all you or I know. They could be taking a complex combination of uppers and downers that somehow balances out, maybe intended to balance them out. Because they need coffee but don't want to get too hyped up, so they smoke a little weed, but perhaps that goes too far, so they do some speed and then pop some valium to smooth things over. Then they go to work just like you and you never know the difference. Some people say this is ridiculous, my theory of counteracting highs, because when you put these things together they don't cancel each other out, but add to make a different sort of experience, but to this I say posh, the existence of inverses. Everything has an inverse.

The day-to-day humdrum begins to set in, even here. That sense of newness which cannot be synthesized again, once lost, like one's freshman year at college, is fading fast for me. Got to get out and see the world and keep the feeling going.

Today I got to experience virtual reality. The room I work in doubles as the "Media Office." There is a giant curved screen at one end, and one puts on bulky stereoscopic glasses like the ones in the old 50's 3D movie theaters, only a little more sophisticated than that I think. Suddenly I was in a factory where orange robotic arms assembled car frames right in front of my face. Usually 3D stuff makes me sick to my stomach, perhaps because I am aware of the illusion. But the illusion was so good this time I didn't even notice it.

There is a lot of really cool stuff going on around me at work. Siemens is not a dedicated software company, so you won't find any people working on ERP systems or scripting or anything like that. The work going on is high-tech. It requires brainpower and computational power, the kind of stuff I've always wanted to do but have been told is a "dead end" these days. Well, okay. IT consulting may where it's at, but as for me, I'm not going to repair software systems but create them, and they're not going to be mind-numbing web development/scripting projects either.

if Job had a bike it would be "Colorado"

My navigational triumph of the day was making it all the way home from Siemens, alone, without making a single wrong turn. Basically this was possible only because I recognize enough landmarks along the way. I have become what I've always detested--a landmark driver.

This morning we had enough problems getting to work, as Halger's bike, a blue one with "Colorado" on the body, lost its chain a total of ten times. Each time he would have to stop and rethread the thing, kicking it and calling it names. ("Dieses Fahrrad ist Scheisse!") He just got back from a rough weekend at home where his girlfriend of six years let him know they were just friends. And on top of this his bike breaks down every 50 meters on his first day back to work.

Eventually he gave up and let Matt pull him the rest of the way to Siemens. With his hand on the back of Matt's bike, hunkered down and leaning heavily to the left, he looked like an injured athlete, a wounded soldier, being toted off the field.

Things started picking up again at work today. Perhaps I'm over the hump.

And now it is time for me to hunker down and lean heavily on some German grammar, in the hopes that maybe by the end of this summer I will actually be able to talk to the other human beings here.

bee

Yesterday and today I went down to the soccer field nearby to play frisbee with Matt and Mark. Got my fix. Have definitely missed being able to throw the disc around, maybe even play a game, and my frisbee callous has all but worn off. If you suddenly found yourself standing in the middle of this little soccer field I don't think you'd know you were in Germany...except for a tiny onion dome tower visible over the treeline, which you could easily miss.

Have gotten the development blues and now I'm in a bit of a slump. Funny how things flow outward from here. If I'm at a standstill on some project, I'm not much fun to be around. But when my project's going well interacting with people requires no effort at all.

the street musicians

Germany just beat Saudi Arabia 8-0 in World Cup action. (Better yet, some store promised they'd discount 5% for every point the Germans won by. I need to figure out where this store is.) France, the favorite, was upset yesterday by Senegal, so the French intern in my department, Florent, is going to have to put up with a lot on Monday. More than usual, that is. He already gets called "the frog eater."

Went into Munich with Matt today. Got a German grammar book, a German/English pocket dictionary, and a 175 g frisbee. The frisbee cost an outrageous 25 Euros and was the same kind you can buy in Walmart for 5 dollars, but timing is everything and I needed one badly.

After shopping around we got Leberkase on bread in the Market, at Vinzenzmurr, which Matt tells me is the German equivalent of a fast food place. Leberkase is a Bavarian specialty and reminded me of thick bologna.

Across the corner from Vinzenmurr stood the Church of the Holy Ghost, built in 1327 and decked out in the 1700s in full-blown Baroque style. And even if I hadn't known it was Baroque, it was obvious from the moment I walked in, and especially obvious when I saw the enormous ornate, gold-covered altarpiece. It is strange to think that secular art is a relatively recent phenomenon in the history of Western Culture. Western Culture--now I sound like Rick Evans.

We were about to take the S-Bahn back to Ottobrunn when I heard classical music from nearby. Under the shadows of an archway, a quintet consisting of cello, flute, clarinet, and two violins played something from Vivaldi's "Four Seasons," Rossini's "Thieving Magpie," and Pachelbel's Canon in D, all cliched stuff but extremely well executed. The first violin was something to watch, bowing wildly, then suddenly turning the motion into a delicate pizzacato, then launching into fiery little passages, all the while peering out happily into the crowd. When he looked me in the eye I saw that very little of his brain was occupied by this process and was completely amazed.

Back home. Now that I have my German language books, there's no excuse any more. Think I'll make some coffee and then go sit in the garden and study.