Goodbye

Today my mother called me and told me sad news. Hans Siedentop, a teacher of mine in High School died on Mai, 24th.
In fact I never had a lesson with him as teacher but he was the head of the computer pool so we knew each other quite well as I worked there regularly when I was in school and even in university when there was stuff like installing server systems and so on.
Why his dead makes me sad is that he was the first one who showed me that being a technic geek is not just a hobby but a profession.
I still remember the day when my friends and me installed new network cables and infrastructure there. Damn,I was proud of this, a teacher believed in me and let me plan and install a whole network infrastructure (ok, that's my job now but in those days I was something about 15).
Another thing I learned from working with him was to think not only about "what is possible to do with the software" but "what are the users needs?" Thank you for this lore as it's still one of my guidelines when it comes to plan technical things.
I don't know (yet) what caused his death with only 59 years but he was suffering from a bad illness so I think he lost the battle against it.

Goodbye and may you be in a better place now.

In remembrance of Hans Siedentop (1949 - 2008)

"wie es im Heft aussieht, so sieht es in Deinem Kopf aus"
"the way your notebook is written, the way your mind looks like"

Aki, a few changes and a new mobile phone

There are 6 000 000 000 people in the world, about half of them female and even if only 1 per hundred is blogging there are still 30 000 000 left. In Nottingham I had the honour to meet one of them: Aki, a really nice girl from Malaysia with a real cool blog (autumnymph.blogspot.com).

As I dont want to bore you with long journey stories and this kind of stuff I just give you some links to the pictures of a day that began as an invitation to coffee on the campus and ended roughly twelve hours later in a flat with nice people, good talks, a Wilhelm-Tell-Roleplay(see modern interpretation here), some sex-education (I like buzzwords in my text :D) and a lot of hot and spicy Pizza.
Special thanks go to Aki and Subha for the nice company and to Meera and Jan for the nice pictures they made (in fact most of the pictures were made by Jan and I had the seldom feeling of being photographed frequently instead of being behind the camera).
Ah well, I think I should begin with the nice "invitation" to England that I got from Aki:
Jan's blog entry about Admins (read the comments!)
and the (commented) pictures of that day on Facebook

I strongly recommend reading Aki's blog as it's funny sometimes, everytime mature and nice to read. But if you comment or contact her in other ways be sure to think first and then write because of her razor sharp mind that even amazed me (although I read her blog frequently but it's even sharper in RL;) ) and her quite allergic reaction to dumbass and childish behaviour ;)

As I was told not to make such a big story of this I have to announce you another (german) blog of Florian, a friend of mine and also studying Communication Technologies at the TU Braunschweig. Here it is.

Another announcement regards pictures: I think I will post only my artitstic pix that need higher resolution to picasa and the rest to Facebook because I link Facebook's social aspects as commenting and the Picasa webspace comes to an end. So please write me an Email or a comment if you have problems with the Facebook thing as slow speed or not being able to open it.


Well, and now I proudly present my blog's first contest:

A Name for my Mobile! (*blink**ring**blink*)


After some delay because of spending my money on visiting Sara I finally bought me a new shiny LG KS 20. Yeeeha, I finally got this PPC/Smartphone thing. Actually I would say that it's more a PPC with additional phone function than a really Smartphone and I still have to learn and search for cool add-ons but I'm already in love!

I think I will post some entries regarding this phone as I'm just playing around and finding out how to use its many functions and what is possible with this phone.

Well, as there is a trend to give your devices names to make them unique (I know an iPhone called Jack and Aki's SE K850 has a name too) and Aki told me that I'm a geek and geeks give names to their devices too I'm searching for a name. I found some details that might help you:
The phone is female, bitchy and jealous of my girlfriend because the first thing it did was deleting her number after a sync :D

Lusi already made a suggestion: Cleopatra because of the behaviour. In depedence of the inventors name I vary this name to: Cleo Luise
Other suggestions are appreciated (your opinion on this one too, of course) and the inventor of the one I'll choose will get a reward (I thought of a romantic boat tour in Nottingham as I tried with Flora and Jan, pictures here) If any circumstances (like me being not in Nottingham) makes this impossible I'll think of something else ;)

p.s. a *big hug* to the happiest girl in the whole world (Aki's self description after finishing her exams;)

How much is 6 000 000?

After a very pleasent stay in Frankfurt I departed to Berlin from Frankfurt-Hahn on Monday, 12.05. after travelling there by bus for about 1 and a half hour. I think I will blog an own ontry on Ryanair as I travelled with them four times now and they are kind of special.

Berlin. Hm, Berlin. I can't count the times I've been to Berlin now as I work there quite frequently for Christian, a friend of mine. Actually I love this city. I love everything, the railway system, the specific sounds of the trams while accelerating, sometimes I love this feeling of being anonymous. I love the feeling that this city never sleeps. I just love this city.
On my arrival we started to work a little on nightshift as it is always a good feeling to have your work done.
The next time we did a boat trip on the Spree and took a look from the water. To be honest, it's not a "must-have" for Berlin but it's ok if you want to relax and watch the city.
In the evening we did one of our famous "let's visit something strange in Berlin" so we decided to visit "the Schlange" , a quite impressive building with a motorway just going through. Well, we arrived there at about 2 am in the morning after listening to a really weird radio station where people discuss their problems live on air. Extremly funny especially after some beer ;)

The next day was my "day off" that I always try to have when I am in Berlin. Christian had to work and attend university so I did my own program that day. As I saw all the tourist attractions already I always try to find something interesting I haven't seen before, this time the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe which I heard of (and parked beneath) but never visited.
Normally I don't like Museums that deal with historical things. They always present you facts and timelines, but if you read the signs "King that build this" ask yourself - did this King ever move a stone? If you read "The army was defeated and 30 000 men died. King ... was killed in the battlefield." And what's with the other ones? Are there no wifes missing their husbands and children losing their fathers?
So I did not have high expectations when I went to the exhibition under this memorial, especially because the time of the Nazis is discussed in German schools very intensive and repeatedly so I know the facts over the holocaust. My personal opinion is they tell you a lot of numbers. But can you imagine what it's like when there were 6 000 000 people killed? Of course you always know that the Nazis were bad and you must not kill people, but were you ever struck by a number?
To be honest, this exhibition impressed my deeply. They showed different families, their backgrounds and their fates and you could compare this to your own home. That were no people living on their own somewhere but people like you and me doing things like you and me, with the same fears, the same aims.
In contrast to this point on my agenda this day the next point led me to the Müggelsee, a lake outside of Berlin (but still belonging to it) where the BVG, the Berlin transport company, has some ferries, one even as a rowboat. Well, although the Berlin S-Bahn goes there, it's quite rural and more like a small village than a part of the city. The ferry tour was quite ok, i met a guy who worked as da database admin at Universal Media in Berlin, we were the only passenger abroad.
The end of this part was quite dramatic as my flight's departure was at 21 55 and I was still lost in the woods at about 19 o'clock :D Luckily Christan drove me to the airport (thank you soooo much) and I arrived there in time.

p.s. if you ever come to Berlin and want to eat good Indian/Singapore food and drink real good a cocktails at a good price I can recommended the Mirchi. It's really worth a visit :)

Anna, Sex and the City

It's been a long time since my last blog entry. And to attract more attention it might be a good idea to post the most googled entry in the title. Especially when you're with four girls that like Sex and the City so you have a reason for this title;)
But I should start the story at the beginning. I had to write exams until the end of march and due to confusion about my schedule I booked a flight to Sweden when university had startet for one week already. But if you can decide between studying and visit your girlfriend, well, that's not a hard decision to make ;) Pictures of this very, very enjoyable trip you may find at my Picasa-Gallerys, the links are on the right side.

Sara came to Germany only ten days later and stayed for a prolonged weekend in Peine. No photos this time because I had to do a lot of things. And no blog entry about these two trips, sorry ;)

So, this is a blog entry about another journey. Our university has a excursion week were we can either take an excursion or just have seven days off. After two excursions in a row last year and one year before I was exausted so I planned my excursion on my own ;)
It would bring me to Frankfurt, Berlin and Nottingham and to Anna, Christian and finally Jan who had asked me if I wanted to visit him in England. Because this was my first chance to come to England I took the chance and made this trip:

• Saturday via train from Peine to Frankfurt
• Monday from Frankfurt-Hahn to Berlin with Ryanair
• Wednesday from Berlin to Nottingham
• and well, I hope, on Sunday back to Berlin. But that's still in the future while I write this entry (it depends strongly on Jan's kindness to let me print my ticket [a note from Jan]) Well, I will just ask Aki [a note from Stephan] ) ;)

Oh, this is currently out of date, I will post the whole Nottingham-Stuff including a prolonged "well, lets drink a cappucino"-event later, but now I have to concentrate on Frankfurt.

After finishing my work in the afternoon of Saturday, 10th May, I boarded the train to Frankfurt and had a stay in Hannover for about half an hour and I got to know that my favourite shop for fruit things was closed a day later so I ordered an "all-whats-left-over"-juice and remembered all the days I survived university just because of these drinks. I hope they will open again :'-(

My trip to Frankfurt was quite uneventful so I wondered if the evening-programme would become more eventful and I was right. Anna met me at the train station and we went to her place to drop my bag and take the first portion of Applewine, the local drink. After she, Miri, Bernadette and another girl whose name I forgot (well, that's the revenge for calling Braunschweig a city in the ex-GDR :p) met we went to Sachsenhausen, the local party area with pubs, bars and clubs. Not quite expensive and with 27° outside and a long weekend it was totally crowded and every i-will-get-married-soon bachelor from Frankfurt and the whole area seemed to be there and celebrated their last time in the wild :D
Highlights were the really cool fact that Miri lost her wallet and got it back with all her money and documents in it, Armid, the guy who invited himself to our water pipe and the guy in underwear who was shouting at the firefighter "I don't know where the fu**ing water is coming from" while standing on a balcony with gallons of water running out of the house everywhere :D

Well, the next morning started quite early for staying up so long and although I drank quite a lot of different things the evening before my head was completely ok and so we could start our Frankfurt-by-foot-in-seven-hours tour which didn't change Anna's mind to wear flip-flops for this day ;)
Frankfurt, or Mainhattan how it's called, is Germanys only city with a real and quite complete skyline. It's the financial capital so every bigger finance company has its headquarter here and so it's one of the most expensive citys in Germany, only excelled by Munich so far.
With no clouds in the sky and a bright sun it was an enjoyable, though long, trip which included

• the completely new university which was closed that day
• the Paulskirche, the place where the first German constitution was discussed and ratified
• the largest skyscraper in Frankfurt with a wonderful view at the skyline
• a long walk along the river "Main". It was so crowded, it seemed that the whole city was there

More pictures are on picasa. After seven hours walking none of us wanted to watch the 4-hour-movie "Apocalypse Now! Redux" anymore so we decided to watch three episodes of "Sex and the city" for distraction and felt asleep. I think there were some parallels in the serial and the evining before, but only slightly ;)

On monday morning I had to leave for Frankfurt-Hahn to take my flight to Berlin so Anna and I had a quite oppulent breakfast and I boarded my bus to an old abandoned airbase near the border to Luxemburg, called Frankfurt-Hahn and one of the main destinations of Ryanair. I was in sorrows that my hand luggage wouldn't meet Ryanair's quite hard regulations, but there was no problem.
Other passengers were not so lucky and so they had to repack their hand luggage. It's quite an advancement when you can read ;)