Hey, how cool is this. The Macquarie Globe published a short summary of my profile. If you wanna have a look you can see it under http://www.international.mq.edu.au/globe.
Update: It’s dead by now. Content expired…
Paris
First I wanna thank everybody who remembered a very memorable event. And for everybody who forgot it – yes it was my birthday. Better write it in your calendar this time. I’ve had a terrific short holiday in Paris last weekend. I think after walking around a few hundred kilometers I should have seen almost all of Paris’ famous places – well, at least from the outside.
For the most places, such as the Louvre or the “Tour Eiffel” there was no time to stand in the queue for hours, go in and marvel at the great artistic pictures and sculptures. For the Eiffel Tower the waiting time was about one to two hours – and frankly I had better things to do than to wait in the queue with millions of other tourists.
Paris in general was very crowded with tourists. You couldn’t find a spot with anybody without a camera. Well I had a camera too, so I suppose I was also one of this “terr-ourists”. What a horrible imagination… I will post a few digital photos as soon as I get my hands on them. And if everything goes well I should get my scanner this weekend. So I might be able to scan a few pix from film. More to add later. As soon as I have some time… Its pretty busy at work right now, so not much time to keep you up to date…
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Happy Easter
I’m heading home for Easter to spend some quality time with my family and friends. So if you’re going to be in Magdeburg too, speak up and we will find some time to meet. Happy Easter to everybody else. Take care and don’t eat too many Easter eggs…
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Once in a cinema…
Yesterday I was watching “Sophie Scholl – Die letzten Tage” (English Text) in a cinema here in Essen. In my opinion, it was a very good story and I can recommend it to everybody with the slightest interest in the history of the German resistance during WWII. Unfortunately, there were only about 20 people in the cinema – apparently the general interest was small.
The arrangement of the movie is very simple, but the main actors played brilliantly (They won a “Silbernen Bären” on the “Berlinale“). You could really dive into Sophie Scholl’s struggle and feel with the characters. I was impressed by the intensity of the movie, which was achieved with simple scenery and costumes. All together an excellent movie and worth to spend a few bucks. Go and watch it .
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Weekend is here…
I’m going to visit a few people in Germany this weekend and I will spend about 10 hours on the train. Unfortunately, the tickets for “Deutsche Bahn” are slightly overpriced, so I’m throwing my money after them. Will go to Hanover, Hagen and Siegen and visit friends and family…
Next week is stuffed with SAP training again, like creating InfoCubes in the Business Warehouse. The creation worked quite well, however I have now idea what to do with these cubes now. Will wait for the enlightenment next week…
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Freezing Winter
Back again. The weekend in Magdeburg was quite cold. Temperatures down to -10°C over the day and about -15°C at night made it possible to take some great pix of the almost frozen Elbe.
Unfortunately, this is a rare opportunity, which occurs only every few years. But this time I was there and had my camera ready to shoot. Enjoy some really cool pix in the photo gallery.
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Back in Germany
Ok, I am back. I know, I was lazy the last weeks, but I really had the intention to put my new years eve experiences online. I even wrote them, but I never made it to edit and post it… Well, I feel bad now. Anyways, I am back in Germany.
Working in Essen and getting a training on SAP Business Information Warehouse. Apparently SAP BW is currently pretty popular and I hope this will influence my future career planning positively. I will be here for a few weeks, so if you have any plans to come around or you live close by come over and I’ll show you my hotel room.
Another good thing is that I’m getting paid my Swiss salary and I only have to pay German prices here. And let me tell you, this is a noticeably difference. Well, I have to finish here to go to my hotel. Will write later if it was a nice or not-so-nice surprise. See ya later.
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First days in Switzerland
Hello folks, just have some time to write my first experiences and impressions of Zurich. Working at my company is pretty cool, the atmosphere is (still) good and the people are friendly as well. Am still very enthusiastic and idealistic, but haven’t been on a project yet. Therefore I’m just taking some introductory courses since there are a lot of things to learn. Zurich is a nice city with an historic core of churches and little allays – nice to wander around and stroll to the Zurich Lake. The weather here is rather cold and grey, but I hope it will become friendlier one day – no comparison to warm and sunny Sydney ;-(
Downsides of living in Zurich are the living expenses. Everything is pretty expensive. I’m paying a big share of my salary for my rent and grocery shopping is a nightmare in your purse. Currently i only have an airbed and a sleeping bag in my small apartment. It’s very empty and I could spend some time starring at the structure of my wallpaper (Raufasertapete!). Anyway, hope next month I can spend some money in IKEA and Co. If you have some furniture in a good shape – I still need a desk and a chair… Well, it’s late and I have to go home if I don’t want to spend the whole night in the office – even if the interior is more appealing here than at home. Greetings to everybody out there…
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I am off to Switzerland…
Hello people out there, today is my big day. It’s 5am and I’m getting ready to catch my plane to Zurich. After 4 months of doing (almost) nothing and being rather bored, real life has me back and I’m going to start my job in a few days. This means I’m changing location and I’ll get my first own apartment.
Exciting… Therefore, some of my contact details will change. However i’m still available online – so if you have something to say there is still ICQ, MSN, AIM, eMail or Skype. My German mobile number will still work for some time, but I’m looking to get a Swiss number soon. Hope to stay in touch with everybody. And if you’re on holiday in Europe, don’t forget coming to Switzerland!
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I was watching TV…
… and what came on was very strange Propaganda …ahm… I mean advertisement. The ESAG (For everybody who doesn’t know this very concerned – and concerning – organization: European Security Advocacy Group) tried to tell the German (And other Europeans – that’s the “E” in the acronym.) viewer how dangerous terrorism is. This frankly is a groundbreaking piece of news. Even on VOX (German TV station) the prices for TV ads in the evening should be reasonable high. So, why should somebody with such a baaaad (in fact horrible) Internet site pay hundreds of thousand of Euros for TV ads on German TV and several ads in bigger European newspapers (for example FAZ) without any further intention?! (Read on…)
All they say in the ad are things such as “Terrorism can affect you!” or “Be concerned!” and they give an Internet address: esag.info (No, I’m intentionally not linking this sh***. But maybe somebody is interested on the person ‘behind’ the site.). Don’t bother looking on the ESAG website – it doesn’t contain any useful information about sources of terrorism or critical evaluation of the reasons. There are no founded information, just some platitudes and stereotypes about how bad terrorism is. Anyway, has anybody ever heard from this obscure organization in the past??? Yea, right terrorism is bad – as we wouldn’t have known this already. What a pity that terrorism is such a complex topic – let’s just simplify the reasons and let’s wage some wars and cut civil rights. The hints about what you can do are great too:
- Direct messages of support to key people in government responsible for counter-terrorism
(In fact I know so many government officials – and who is responsible for counter-terrorism in Germany? Maybe the BND – I will surely call them tomorrow and let them know what a great job they are doing and that they should cover up some sleeper and suicide bombers in Germany. After this I will call the Government and tell them that I expect more Anti-Terrorism laws. Just like in the US. Who needs civil rights?! If you”re not a terrorist you don’t have anything to fear”) - Volunteer time to work with concerned local groups
(Concerned local groups? We don’t have any in the region – at least I don’t recognize any. But tomorrow in the early morning I will organize a Neighborhood Watch Group or better a paramilitary militia to hunt all these bad terrorists. What a great luck that you can spot them so easily – they are Arabic and wear turbans. Danger – this was sarcasm…) - Be alert and report suspicious activity
(Yea, these guy’s in turbans are very suspicious, and these people who want to have Turkey in the EU, and especially people who stand in for civil rights and against tough laws against terrorism. But the most suspicious to me are organizations who make TV ads and have Internet sites with unknown initiators, secret funding and ambiguous messages…) - Think twice about making financial contributions to organizations possibly funneling funds to terrorists
No worries, I’m not going to contribute to the Christian Church for funding crusades (Or what was the choice or words by Mr. Bush???) or my University for teaching bad foreign (preferably Arabic) terrorists. Neither will I contribute to the CIA or the German respectively American Government. You see, I’m a good citizen.
Would be really funny – if it wouldn’t be this stooopid. Furthermore there is no author, and no real contact – just a form and phone number… So maybe we should be very suspicious to this kind of manipulation – but unfortunately – I suppose – there will be enough idiots around who believe what they got told.
Update: I was just curios and grabbed the source code of the website and its quite – hmm, let’s say interesting. But have a look for yourself what keywords the site propagates for search engines:
META NAME=”KEYWORDS” CONTENT=”News, news, New, new, Technology, technology, Headlines, headlines, Nuke, nuke, PHP-Nuke, phpnuke, php-nuke, Geek, geek, Geeks, geeks, Hacker, hacker, Hackers, hackers, Linux, linux, Windows, windows, Software, software, Download, download, Downloads, downloads, Free, FREE, free, Community, community, MP3, mp3, Forum, forum, Forums, forums, Bulletin, bulletin, Board, board, Boards, boards, PHP, php, Survey, survey, Kernel, kernel, Comment, comment, Comments, comments, Portal, portal, ODP, odp, Open, open, Open Source, OpenSource, Opensource, opensource, open source, Free Software, FreeSoftware, Freesoftware, free software, GNU, gnu, GPL, gpl, License, license, Unix, UNIX, *nix, unix, MySQL, mysql, SQL, sql, Database, DataBase, Blogs, blogs, Blog, blog, database, Mandrake, mandrake, Red Hat, RedHat, red hat, Slackware, slackware, SUSE, SuSE, suse, Debian, debian, Gnome, GNOME, gnome, Kde, KDE, kde, Enlightenment, enlightenment, Interactive, interactive, Programming, programming, Extreme, extreme, Game, game, Games, games, Web Site, web site, Weblog, WebLog, weblog, Guru, GURU, guru, Oracle, oracle, db2, DB2, odbc, ODBC, plugin, plugins, Plugin, Plugins”
Did anybody forgot to change the php-nuke settings or tried to do some search-engine-optimization??? Yea, right – TV ads and no money for employing a decent web administrator. How do they want to get to “World Domination” if they can’t even master their own website.