Merry Xmas

Since last week, when I weak up I always think, something is wrong. No, it´s not beacause the candle in the wind or the weather but because I feel powerless. But there´s really no time for that right now. The show must go on! I´ve to study, then I´ll go abroad on the day after tomorrow and when I return (probably on 2nd) I´ve to study again. Hope to be energized again soon...

Anyway I wish you Merry Christmas (for those who are celebrating). For the others I wish not too boring days. And then have a really good end of the year and a marvellous start into 2007!I will spend new years eve in Slovakia and be back again next year.

Until then, Good night and good luck!

Parlez francais!

The Xmaszeit

When the last Kalender-sheets
flattern through the winterstreets
and the Dezemberwind is blowing
then ist everybody knowing
that it is not allzuweit:
she does come – the Weihnachtszeit.

All the Menschen, Leute, people
flippen out of ihr warm Stueble,
run to Kaufhof, Aldi, Mess,
make Konsum and business.
Kaufen this und jene things
and the Churchturmglocke rings.

Manche holen sich a Taennchen,
when this brennt, they cry "Attention".
Rufen for the Feuerwehr:
"Please come quick to loeschen her!"
Goes the Taennchen of in Rauch,
they are standing on the Schlauch.

In the kitchen of the house
mother makes the Christmasschmaus.
She is working, schufts and bakes
the hit is now her Yoghurtkeks.
And the Opa says als Tester:
"We are killed bis to Silvester".
Then he fills the last Glas wine –
yes, this is the Christmastime!

Day by day does so vergang,
and the Holy night does come.
You can think, you can remember,
this is immer in Dezember.

Then the childrenlein are coming
candle-Wachs is abwaerts running.
Bing of Crosby Christmas sings
while the Towerglocke rings
and the angels look so fine –
well this is the Weihnachtstime.

Baby-eyes are big and rund,
the family feels kerngesund
when unterm Weihnachtsbaum they’re hocking
then nothing can them ever shocking.
They are so happy, are so fine –
this happens in the Christmastime!

The animals all in the house,
the Hund, the Katz, the bird, the mouse,
are turning round the Weihnachtsstress,
enjoy this day as never nie,
well they find Kittekat and Chappi
in the Geschenkkarton von Pappi.

The family begins to sing
and wieder does a Gloeckchen ring.
Zum song vom gruenen Tannenbaum
the Traenen rennen down and down.
Bis our mother ploetzlich flennt:
"The christmas-Gans im Ofen brennt!"
Her nose indeed is very fine.
End of the Weihnachtstime.

Videos of the week

Cool U2-video:

Tactic if you want to watch your preferred tv-program:

Gossip reloaded

Ok, some possible implications. Each implication is derived from the corresponding rule-nr. Should you take it serious? - it´s up to you:

1. Don´t trust anyone! Even the person you´re producing gossip with, could take out a camera and record the evidence for other purposes than just the own memory.
2. Nothing is what it seems. But the better the artwork the more valuable the information. In order to produce valuable information, better be creative.
3. The earlier you produce gossip, the smaller the potential damage - it takes longer until evidence is presented = gossip travels slower = less potential damage. Therefore if you intend to produce gossip, do it straight from the beginning on.
4. Always stand up in plenary and admit that the presented gossip is TRUE. It´ll count as extenuating circumstances.
5. If you realize on the next day that your gossip-partner is not fitting you´re perception, then you have to spread even more gossip about yourself in order to explain yourself.
6. You should help the FBI officers to get a clear picture of the gossip - otherwise someone else might get the credits.
7. Gossip needs all your resources. Although men and women are recording the evidence, they might set different focus and you don´t want to drop out because you only attracted one focus right?
8. Next time have a closer look on the FBI officers. They just want to hide something!
9. You´ll never see the most interesting gossip in plenary, because the victim might be present and per definition he/she is not supposed to see it at the same time you do.
10. Give your best while producing gossip. There are always competitors around who try to produce a better output.

As long as you love me...

Another update about the time when I was in Stuttgart. Today it´s about Alp (Turkish Aiesec-Trainee in my departement at Bosch) on the left and Alex (Brazilian Aiesec-Trainee & my flat-mate) on the right aka. backstreet boys...

The cardinal rules of gossip

During my hunt for a master thesis topic, I stumbled over the book "Rumors and Rumor Control" by Allan J. Kimmel. There he mentiones the ten cardinal rules of gossip. Here they come:

1. Everyone gossips. Even if you´ve just stood around listening, it´s tantamount to gossiping.
2. No one ever asks if the information is true. Everyone assumes that it is.
3. The greater the potential damage, the faster the gossip travels.
4. The more you try to tell people that the gossip is not true, the more they will believe it is.
5. Major decisions have been based on gossip. When the decision turns out to be bad, gossipy rumors arise to explain the bad decision.
6. Of all forms of communication, gossip is the most easily distorted.
7. Men gossip just as much as women, and gossip is filtered through socioeconomic strata by both genders.
8. People gossip to protect their own reputations. When the focus is on someone else, one receives a momentary reprieve.
9. The more demeaning or hurtful the gossip, the longer it takes for the victim to hear about it.
10. Gossip thrives in an atmoshpere of secrecy and competition. It tends to thrive most where there is too much secrecy and where advancement is based on overcompetition.
    

Deutschland - ein Sommermärchen?

A long time ago, on an early december morning, a hick took his bags, packed with some of his belongings and went to the city. When he arrived there, he wasn´t confused, not even disoriented as you might suppose. No, he had been there many times before. But the city wasn´t his final destination. He boarded a vehicle and went in direction of the rising sun. Soon afterwards, around one hour later, he had to lift his heavy bags again, because he wanted to change direction and the vehicle didn´t want to. So, he took his belongings and searched for another transportation which went his planned way. Some time after he settled down, still on his way now in the direction of the region where the Vikings were believed to live, he realized that most people around him were speaking a different language. But as it was only slightly different he was still able to understand it. He lost track of the time but it must have been around 3 hours after he changed direction, when he reached his final destination…

It all happened 365 days ago, the final destination was Stuttgart, and the hick… It was me! I remember, arriving there at the mainstation, being picked-up by two people I just had contact to, through a couple of emails. I still see the dirty, sticky table in the living room of the flat (probably from a party from the evening before) in front of me. And what I still know from my first day is the time I met the first other trainee… I faced some problems to understand him. I realized that he was talking german, but still - it was more like turkish-german ;-) And he tried to talk while he was in his room and I was in the living room. Anyway, we got used to each other as we worked for 9 months in the same company, for 6 months even in the same department and spent many hours apart from work together with the other trainees…

It was really an amazing time in Germany. It was definitely more than a summer fary tale. A pleasure u can´t measure ;-) I had an interesting job. Beside work, there are great memories from my last year - Twin week in Finland with @ Bern, Tampere & Jyväskylä, Easter weekend with 7 friends in Venice, a whole month of party, good mood and excellent weather in June during world cup, a lot of great people I met and many, many other things. 3 months have passed since I returned. But still, I miss some things and I hope to see those people again (hopefully very soon). And when I think back to this time, I always get a smile upon my face…

Thinking

A mental process which allows beings to model the world, and so to deal with it effectively according to their goals, plans, ends and desires. Words referring to similar concepts and processes include cognition, sentience, consciousness, idea, and imagination. It involves manipulation of information, as when we form concepts, engage in problem solving, reason and make decisions. It is a higher cognitive function and the analysis of thinking processes is part of cognitive psychology.
The basic mechanics of the human mind reflect a process of pattern matching or rather recognition. In a "moment of reflection", new situations and new experiences are judged against recalled ones and judgements are made. In order to make these judgements, the intellect maintains present experience and sorts relevant past experience. It does this while keeping present and past experience distinct and separate. The intellect can mix, match, merge, sift, and sort concepts, perceptions, and experience. This process is called reasoning. (Wikipedia)

Lately I have the impression, that people are experiencing things like me. It goes like that: Someone says something and there´s a spontaneous reaction and afterwards, the topic is changed. But later, probably on their own they start to think about it and the topic keeps coming up and up again. As I mentioned, it happened to me this week - even twice. Once on sunday at do-it and once yesterday at university. Well i´m wondering and thinking about what I could and want to do besides the studies. At the moment, there are two things which could be interesting. And yes, there are rumours around - but only in my head ;-)

topic of the day

can´t get it out of my head

since I woke up today and heard this song on the radio, it´s following me...

Just did-it

Sitting in the train between Göschenen and Arth-Goldau, looking out the window to the ugly grey, rainy sky, I have some time reflecting about the weekend and write down some things. Once again I was in Fiesch, this time for Do-it. But not as a delegate but as a member of the extended organizing committee. I really saw the conference from a totally different perspective. The first two times I was there I joined the sessions and workshop. This time the only one I attended was the closing plenary. I really had no clue about the content of the sessions the delegates where attending. The only information I had, was that this track wants to have a coffee break at this specific time in that location and the amount of delegates…

My sub-team - the logistics - was responsible for these coffee breaks, to set up workshop rooms and clean afterwards. This job really raised my awareness for trash handling. It´s really strange how the delegates threw there stuff away. They put packaging of coffee or sugar into the organic trash when there is a normal trash almost next to it (maybe 2 metres is two far away?), empty recyclable bottles into the normal trash when we had the bag for recyclables just next to it (is 30cm still to far away?) or they left half full bottles and half eaten candy bars just somewhere (not even throwing them away). And it´s really interesting what a mess people can make just with babybel-packaging.

Well, yesterday evening at around 6 o´clock the conference finished officially. My timetable since then:

1800-2000 cleaning workshop rooms and coffee breaks
2000-2200 oc dinner
2200-0100 cleaning the dirty sticky floor of the party room
0100-0200 cleaning the dormitories, some random stuff
0200-0500 sitting together with the oc and just talking about random stuff (eg. our future in @)
0500-0800 sleeping finally
0830-1300 travelling back to St. Gallen
1400-… Back at university for a meeting for our research project

Ok, for those out there who want to do a project soon I have some suggestion for topics:

• The “latte macchiato” case: Process orientation in trash behaviour
  
• The optimal allocation of trash bins
• Consumer behaviour influenced by alcohol
• The differences of organic trash, recyclable and normal trash from the customer perspective

Some awards I´d like to give:

Award for the Inkind, with which you can make the best mess (Nominees: chips, peanuts, party-kiss)
Winner: party-kiss

Award for the funniest thing in the early morning:
Winner: to see the faces of the delegates

Award for the funniest thing in before lunch:
Winner: Sue´s party concept with her “Emmi Gascho”

Award for the funniest thing in the evening:
Winner: Discussion with some OC members about the inhabitants of Bitsch (and some other OC members misunderstanding us)

Award for special delegate:
Winner: Yavor, for the support of the OC with tidying after awards-night and supporting after conference was finished! Thank you!!

Award for the best core OC:
Winner: The OCs of my beloved LC Berne, for the marvellous job they did in the past months!

Award for the best OCP:
Winner: Martin, for his outstanding job!!