Frau 9:46

Some relationships are just strange. One of them started for me about a year ago:

I walked out of my apartment building one Thursday morning to catch the 9:46 bus to work. At least that's the time the public transportation tells us. In truth, well, there is no truth. There's only guessing and waiting: Is that bus going to come or not?

Well, on that morning, 9:46 came and went. At 9:50, I took a seat at the bus stop, figuring I might as well be comfortable while I waited. I then heard a voice from nearby saying, "This is a scandal! No matter when you get here, that bus is late!"

I glanced in the direction of the voice saw that it was emanating from a grandmotherly lady: 65 or so, gray hair, maybe 5'4" tall, and definitely on the chubby side. And I saw that she was talking directly to me.

Generally, I try to avoid contact with other bus riders. I enjoy sitting in silence as I wait for the bus or ride it. It's a very relaxing experience for me.

But just this one time, I made an exception. I figured that somebody's grandmother was not much of a risk.

So I replied, "You're right. With this bus, you never know."

That's all she needed. Suddenly, she started talking -- or, more specifically, complaining -- a mile a minute. She started telling me about all the bad experiences she had had with this and other buses. I didn't need to utter a word. She proved to be someone who could talk endlessly without any verbal response from her listeners.

I was a bit irritated, but I just kept my mouth shut. Fortunately, the bus soon arrived, at 9:56, only 10 minutes late.

When the lady saw the bus coming, she sprang up to get on it, and she finally stopped talking. Even better, she climbed on the bus and ran to get a seat at the front. I went to the back. She did not try to make any contact with me after that. For her, our relationship seemed a closed deal.

Yet, this same scene has been repeating itself throughout the past year, at least every time that I make the mistake of catching the 9:46 bus. That seems to be the lady's official time to get on. As soon as she spots me, she latches onto me and launches into her bus travails. I never (have a chance to) say anything.

And, like the first time, our relationship seems to be over once the bus arrived. The lady shuts up, boards the bus, and runs for a seat at the front. Once on the bus, she avoids any and all contact with me. She simply zips up and shuts up like saying "Well, that's it, buddy. Have a nice ride."

Although I initially found these encounters somewhat strange, I have now come to appreciate them. The relationship between the lady and me has held up remarkably well, and it appears to be in no danger of ending tomorrow.

Kerli Time

This is my favorite video of the day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK_vg5NFV-E&NR=1

I'm not sure whether I will still like it tomorrow, but it is certainly worth several more views until then.

The artist is a young lady named "Kerli." Before I ever saw her video, I heard one of the MTV anchors talking about the "Kerli video," and I immediately thought that Kerli must be a new rap artist. Boy was I wrong! This video comes completely out of non-rap field. Instead, the tune is a catchy little Gothic music song, dark but amusing. Kerli's look-and-style seems to derive from Bjork, April Lavigne, and Lady Gaga...plus Alice in Wonderland.

Kerli comes from Estonia, and I have to admit that I don't know any other singer or bands that hail from there. A lot of good stuff is coming out of the former East Bloc and Scandinavian countries these days.

Another band worth looking at is Empire of the Sun. Here's their video "Walking on a Dream". (Hmmm...must be my day for "Walking" videos!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmM2RwlxGt0

No Pacifier Needed

Almost every young mother here owns a near-car-sized baby carriage. Some of those things must also be about as expensive as a car. They are big, so big! On the public transportation system here, mothers with babies or small children must always be given first right to grab a space to sit or stand, or to park their baby carriages. Some of those carriages must be a yard and a half wide. Sometimes fights break out because mothers will simply push people out of the way with their carriages. I think those must be the Joan Crawford mummies.

But today I saw a heartening sight. As I was waiting for the bus, a sixty-something-year-old woman came walking by and pushing a large carriage in front of her. I just assumed that she must be the grandmother doing a bit of babysitting. But then on second look, I realized that I was quite wrong. Positioned right where I expected to see a baby was a tiny but adult ong-haired white terrier (don't ask me what type). The dog appeared to be perfectly content, with no interest in getting out of his bed. He just sat there calmly, watching the world as it coasted past him. I somehow felt much happier than a few minutes earlier

Passw??ds

Don't get me wrong. I love the Web. The best proof of that is probably the fact that I spend about five hours a day surfing and swimming in the webbie world (but don't get concerned: most of that time is while at work). I love being able to instantly find important and trivial information alike with just a few clicks.

Of course, there is one problematic aspect about all of this: passwords. Yes, I admit that the fault for this is 100% me. I should have crafted some sort of system -- a simple tabular list, for example -- and hide the thing somewhere where I can pull it out anytime the Forget Password Virus strikes me. But I haven't. The closest I have come is to jot down passwords on some slip of paper that I promise I will store away in a safe place. This approach is not always successful. It tends to lead to one of the following situations:

1) I can't remember where I stored the slip of paper.
2) I find a slip of paper with a password on it, but I cannot remember what website it is for.
3) I find a slip of paper with a password on it, but it is the password to some other site than the one I want to access.
4) I remember the password, but I cannot remember my user name.
5) By the time I do find the right user name and password, I have forgotten what I wanted to look for (which is probably a good indication of just how important it was).
6) I remember my user name and the password, but the website is now defunct.
7) I remember two or more passwords, yet I cannot remember which site each of them is for.
8) Five minutes before I log on to my computer, the password to the site I want to visit is clearly in my head, but by the time I log on, I am drawing a blank for the password.
9) Each time any of the above happens, I swear that I am going to get myself a notebook to jot down all these passwords and PINs. Let's see: I have been regularly using computers in my daily life since 1984, and I still have not bought that notebook.
10) I go to the store to buy the aforementioned notebook, and I come away having bought an umbrella, deodorant, soap, and bath cloths and then make it halfway home before it occurs to me that I forgot the notebook. Well, at least I am dry, clean and I don't stink.
11) I find the slip of paper with the password on it, I remember my correct user name, but I then remember that I wrote the password using some sort of secret code so that nobody else could figure it out. Unfortunately, I have by now forgotten the secret code myself.
12) The website has terminated my account for lack of use.

Well, I figure a dozen's about enough

The Fruits of My Labor

Work was very busy, very demanding today. My desk stayed hectic with an average of three jobs going on at once for the entire day, and with an average of three people in my office at any given time. Yet my brain kept switching off and zooming to absurd thoughts that had nothing to do with work. Perhaps I should be worried about this behavior, but it's been going on so long -- specifically, about 45 years -- that I don't even fight it any more.

It seems that the more I have to do, the more my mind wanders off to things that have no bearing whatsoever on my work life, nor to any other aspects of my life as far as I can tell. Conversely, the less busy I am, the fewer of these interfering signals bounce off my antennas.

In fact, when I have nothing whatsoever to do, my mind is just as blank as it can be: no bothersome signals to detract me from what I am doing, i.e. nothing.

So there I was today with so many people wanting so much from me, and all I could think was...What would be like to live inside a kiwi? I could hollow out my own little space inside, make myself a little bed and chair out of strips of faux kiwi leather snatched from the outside of the fruit. I could plug in a tiny halogen lamp to illuminate the cool green walls of my apartment. Tiny kiwi seeds would offer themselves as the perfect material for creating some imaginative kiwi art for those green walls, just to make things homey. And if things ever got too crowded for comfort, I could upgrade my digs to something even more exciting -- the multi-cavity interior of a fancier fruit: a pomegranate!

Musiklandschaften

I spent much of this weekend watching music videos. There seems to be a lot of enjoyable REAL music out there these days (i.e. the rap rage is tapering off), and that goes for the scene here in Germany as well. I hope that you can see these links (the music companies have really started cracking down on accessibility from one country to another). If you can't pull them up simply by clicking on them, try pasting them to the address line in your browser. That usually gets things going.

The first one is from Peter Fox, a German guy from the band named "Seeed." This song is named "Alles Neu" (= Everything New). It has been on the chart for months now, and for good reason.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdtLCfEcPL4


The second one is from the German-band "Deichkind," and the name of the song is "Luftbahn" (= air-train). The song itself is light and beautiful, and the video wanders onto some unexpected terrain:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tSVt7o0vkY&NR=1


The next one comes from a young American singer named Lady Gaga. I think this song, "Pokerface," is also a hit in the U.S. these days:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d27Hj8Gg9o


This one is from the American (Seattle) group named "Fleet Foxes." The name of the song is "Mykonos." It sounds like a mixture between Eagles and Fleetwood Mac, though seems not to derive from them. I could not find the actual video, so you will only get audio here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeiRe4Qp9Dw


And here's a quick bit of feel-good pop that really soars despite being so light. The group: Ich&Ich (=Me&Me). The song: "So soll es bleiben" (= and that's the way things will stay). The vocals are really quite extraordinary (for pop music):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SiCgrW_50Y


This is not a German band, but they are very popular. The song is "Dance with Somebody" by Mando Diao (from Sweden!). A bit of fun absurdity!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9rLqHBaxBg


And one more here from Germany. The song is titled "Allein, Allein" (= alone, alone) from the group "Polarkreis 18" (=polar circle 18). The song has been dominating Germany's charts since last September.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=444L2Kc4zIg


Now if all of that was too much foreign-language stuff for you, here's a fun clip from Miss Lily Allen from right across the English Channel (I still haven't taken a trip through the Chunnel; perhaps the time is nigh). The song is "The Fear" from the album "It's not me, it's you."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-wGMlSuX_c

Desperately Pleading the Fifth

Now here's some news about corporate sleaziness:

Back in November, our company distributed a questionnaire to all employees asking them to rate their direct managers. The questionnaire contained about 25 questions probing us about all aspects of the employee/manager relationship. The company assured us that the questionnaire would be done on a 100% anonymous basis: Absolutely no one would have to worry about their individual answers being made known to anyone else. So far, so good.

In mid-February, the company announced the results for everyone to see. To make the results more meaningful (their words), the company revealed to each manager the breakdown of answers within their individual department. For example, my department consists of seven employees reporting to one manager. The results provided the manager with the seven exact answers to each question, but fortunately did not reveal exactly how the individual employee answered any given question.

I personally considered that somewhat of a breach of anonymity, but the manager still did not know exactly who provided which answer. So I swallowed my sense of violation and got back to work.

Well, last week, our manager informed us that the company now wanted each manager of each group to have one-on-one meetings with each employee to get a better idea of what was on employees' minds. This really made me feel uneasy, but our manager assured us that everyone's anonymity would be honored.

Today, I discovered just what that meant: Our manager scheduled one-hour one-on-one meetings with each of us. When my time came, I showed up as planned. I was expecting some sort of generic, non-specific discussion with my manager in which she would ask for suggestions on how we could improve productivity within our department. Boy was I wrong!

After I sat down, my manager pulled out a complete copy of the questionnaire and proceeded to step through the questions one by one in order to get my direct input for each! I sat there somewhat shell-shocked. I did my best to deliver non-answers on each question, but I soon realized there are only so many ways you can deliver a non-answer without it sounding exactlly like your previous non-answers.

I'm still a bit stunned. I don't know whether I should emit a very loud sigh of relief...or wait for the next shoe to drop!

A Bristly Future

Another area where I think we need a better idea is the matter of toothbrushes. Although, the lowly toothbrush has indeed done wonders for dental health, it has not evolved greatly over the years. Sure, there's a truckload of different kinds of electric tooth brushes out there, yet, for the most part, they all boil down to a brush on the end of a stick.
What I would like to see is a contraption that is basically a set of reverse dentures covered with tiny brushes. You could simply place one half of the contraption over your entire set of upper teeth and the other half over your entire set of lower teeth. (Of course, you would first need to apply a bit of tooth paste on the brush contraption.) Then, after you set the U-shaped set of brushes in your mouth, you can press a switch that makes the tiny brushes start massaging your teeth. That way both of your hands will be free to do something else as you brush. Life would be so much easier!

Clicks Recycled

Today, I've been obsessing about keyboard and keypad clicks. To see what I mean, just assume that about one billion people around the world use a computer or some other keypad device every day, and that each person makes approx. 2000 keystrokes per day. That translates into approx. 2,000,000,000,000 clicks per day. If you then multiply that figure by 365 days per year, you're quickly looking at 730,000,000,000,000 -- in other words, 730 trillion -- clicks per year. That's a mighty big number.

Which leads me to wonder...how much of our worldwide need for energy could be covered by harnessing all this excess click energy and channeling it into electricity to power to...hmmm, say, to power all our computers and nighttime streetlamps. Of course, the major obstacle there is to find out how to capture all that energy and put it to good use.
Just to put one idea out there, assume that we could all wear special gloves that capture the excess energy involved each time a finger hits a key, and the energy could then be fed into a household battery system to drive the very computer you are working on. Or just to make this proposal more flexible, assume that the captured energy can be stored on a special battery integrated directly into the glove. Thus, you wouldn't have to worry about unwieldy connectors and cables. You could click anywhere you want without feeling guilty about losing even a tiny bit of that valuable energy.

To a Morning Ex, with Milk

I never trusted you when you were sweet.
You just weren't honest.
You seemed so harmless,
only to drive me
into the flimsy arms of exhaustion.
On those days, I found it better
to go next door, to Mother and tea.
Did you ever notice that she
never turned to you
when she was feeling down?
She knew your bitter side,
when you were strong
and I was weak.
Of course, only I understood
the joy of Saturday mornings
with you, alone in bed.
You kept me hanging on for years,
your Italian-Columbian mix my habit.
But your acid was stronger than mine.
Still, it's good at least
to catch a whiff of you again,
enjoy a roasted breath of memory.

96-97

Rogers steps to the line,
glances down, checks his toes,
the ivory of the shoe rubber
comforting against the white glaring back.
"No silly mistakes," he tells himself,
one second to go.

The ref tosses him the ball.

He closes his eyes,
pictures the six men standing along the lane,
a mixed bag of coffee beans, light to dark roast,
except Kulik, the Ukrainian,
the only white man on the floor,
possibly the whitest one in the whole arena,
six-eight, gaunt, eyes barracuda gray,
networks of veins protruding on limbs bred hairless.

Rogers raises his lids, focuses forward, up,
lifts the ball, left hand at side, right underneath,
sweaty palms and fingers seeking traction.
Compressed air, the game's fickle inmate of physics,
shoots an ounce of power into his hands,
down his arms, across his chest.

He falls still, eyes locked on rim,
bends his knees, waits for their signal.
It's always the knees. They have to communicate,
coordinate the whole, load the spring.

One...two...three...

Ooomph!

His hands wilt, arms drop.

The ball arcs high, crests, turns down,
hits the backboard, bounces forward.
It snags the front of the rim,
pulls to the left, hugging the metal, rises,
rolls to the backboard, and stops,
dallying between valor and villain.

Rogers purses his lips, blows, lightly,
the way he does in his wife's ear
to nudge her to forgiveness.

The ball waivers, drifts left, falls,
a sigh shy of kind.

Food Fit for a Queen

For dinner tonight, I cook fried steak. That is quite unusual for me, almost as rare as receiving a visit from the pope. I normally try to avoid fried food, just to keep my health conscience clear. But it happened. And even more surprising given my feeble attempts at culinary art, the steak was quite good.

I cooked it by applying the winter clothes technique: I put on a first layer of flour, fried the steak briefly, took the steak out of pan, dipped it the flour again, and put it back in the pan and fried it until ready.. My only mistake was that I had only bought one piece of steak at the store (actually, they only had one piece; apparently, there is a shortage of cows in Germany).

If my dog, Agnes, had still been alive, I'm sure she would have gotten most of the steak. She had a very good nose for telling the difference between good steak / bad steak, and whenever I cooked something that turned out good, she started applying her superior skills of manipulation before the goods were even out of the frying pan. Often, she ended up getting the entire piece of meat. I would end up eating salad, somehow very satisfied.

Ring-Tailed Fun

On Saturdays, I spend much of the day watching animal shows on TV. I know the shows are targeted at children, but they hold my attention for hours on end. And one of my favorite animals is the coati. They are spunky, curious, intelligent, nimble, creative, much like one of my sisters (no names mentioned, of course). They scoot around with their tails stuck high in the air as if equipped with antennas to detect other tribes of their own species.

Even more fascinating is when the whole troop of them scurries off in the same direction, like a bunch of ballet dancers or Navy seals that had a few too many espressos. They seem to enjoy being part of a larger group, and when a bunch of them teams up, you get the feeling that nothing within a 300-yard radius of their group goes unnoticed. And if one of their sentries lets out a warning screech, all of them disband in a split second and are out of sight within 3 seconds.

But as much as I would like to have a one, I will not intentionally sound out the market for household coatis. These little creatures are made for the outdoors and the wild, and captivity would rob them of their little souls. Nevertheless, if someone out there comes across an orphaned baby coati without any hope of a coati parent, give me a call. I do an excellent imitation of a mama coati.