Household Tips

Don't store your dirty clothes outside together with onions when it is raining.

Household experts will already know that onion peel is great for dying things, and can probably imagine the results. Why would anyone want to do this? I moved the onions outside a couple of weeks ago as I was worried that some flies might eat them. On Sunday, I had a great time playing football in the rain. When I got in I made a cup of tea and threw the wet stuff on the balcony, right on top of the onions. It's the "out of sight, out of mind, out of the window" approach to a clean flat.

Thinking about it, it's not really a very good approach. At one point in my previous flat I had a cauliflower on the second floor window sill for over a week. I hoped that birds would eat it, or something, but it just went mouldy and started to smell.

I had a tough weekend, as I didn't feel like tidying, washing, or cleaning. I had to have strong words with myself yesterday to remind me that I need to do these things so that I can play football in the rain. I spent this evening cleaning the flat and sorting out the balcony. Things are looking better.

Random Thoughts

I'm doing some proof-reading. Do I not like "On the one hand, on the other hand" expressions. One the one hand they are padded, inexact and cliched, on the other hand they are still padded, inexact and cliched.

Stop offering me lifts! I actually enjoy going by bicycle, even when it's raining. I get fresh air and exercise, and am mostly free from worrying about petrol prices. On the other hand, if my bicycle has a puncture I might retract this statement and crawl into your car.

On the one hand, you might want to look at this video. On the other hand you might not. If we'd been born with three hands would we use "on the third hand"? Does our physiology limit us to binary thinking?

On the one hand, that's an interesting thought. On the other hand it might be bollocks, and a misrepresention of cause and effect. On the third hand, I could google "on the third hand" and see if someone already wrote a science fiction book about it.

Anyway, that video. I've not laughed so much in ages. Check out the guy in the blue suit.

I bid you to burn.

As part of my psychotherapy, I am trying to limit my perfectionism. I have been juggling with torches a lot recently, and noticed that I become slightly obsessed with doing better and neater tricks.

This perfectionism leads me to learning a new trick quickly, and making it look really nice. The problem is that the good feeling lasts only a few minutes, and then I think of something new and improved. So when I see myself doing takeouts (first trick in the video, those nice long arcs) I think how it would look better if I mixed them with a few reverse takeouts. When I do chops, I notice that my left arm isn't as fast as my right arm. When I carry one torch up and across, I think how much more symmetric it would be if I could do it first with the left hand then with the right hand.

So I made an effort to load this video. It's not perfect (very little is); I drop the clubs a few times, not everything works, but there are some very nice bits which I am proud of. I try to ask myself how I would react if someone else had been juggling in the video, but that's difficult when I know it's me. I just watched it again with squinted eyes so that I could only see the torches and not myself. The torches make some really good patterns in the air, and that must be true no matter who is creating them.

Tales of Great Valor

I've been reading Lord of the Rings. This evening I had a nice game of football, just a turn-up and play affair. The opposition were a bit too ball-hogging, and not too good at shooting on target.

So, as the golden sun set over the western woods, the game moved toward the eastern goal. Thus did their striker the ball smite, that its resting place in the bramble thicket lay. The left-back, clad in long socks and leather shoes was driven back by the sharp spikes of the blackberry bush. The striker strode round the bush, eyeing for the missing leather orb, but was led astray by the sweet taste of blackberries, and searched no longer.

As hopes faded, Mr. Endofphil took it upon himself to find the lost ball. Starting his journey to the western woods, he found the great wooden sword carved by storms past. He took it in his hands, and named it Stick. Weary, without food or drink, and with the weight of Stick slowing down his already tired legs, he returned to the bramble bush. The sight of those fearful spikes which had torn many a mortal leg to shreds roused his anger, and smiting Stick with all his might did he force a way through the bush. The bramble bush was resilient, but as he smote to the left, to the right, and to the floor, the path became clear. He saw the ball and dropped Stick so as to hold the ball tightly. The brambles sensed their chance, and began to rise again, determined to take their toll. As the stalks rose, pushing their spikes into his legs, Mr. Endofphil ran, jumped, and landed safe from the bush. The ball was once more on the Pitch, and Stick may be found by future adventurers.

Datenschutz

Germans get quite worked up about protecting their private details. It might have something to do with bad experiences with the Gestapo and the Stasi.

Sometimes I think that the British ought to be a little more careful. I needed to send a letter to my parents, but had forgotten the house number. Luckily, I could remember the street name and the month they moved in, and by looking it up on nethouseprices I got the house number, as well as the exact date of sale and the price they paid. This is one of many websites in England which make money by telling other people the details of your house purchase.

Any house sale in England is registered with the government land registry. This seems a sensible way of recording what belongs to whom. The fun-lovin' staff of the land registry decided that it would be great if everyone could find out how much the neighbours had paid for their house, and will tell you any sale price for three English pounds. They were undercut by private websites which are funded by advertisements.

So Mr. A sells his house to Mrs B, and lets the government know. Then Mr. C starts a website, gets the government Database and takes money from Mrs. D (who knows Mrs B. from the Womens Institute) to reveal how much Mrs. B is worth. Mr. C then probably gets rich, and lobbies the government to reveal the NHS records, so that Mrs B. can see whether Mrs. C had breast surgery.

So the next time you get a letter from England, take your correspondent's address, put it into that website, note the price, and in your reply mention that they have been ripped off as the neighbours seem to have paid 32 grand less despite their garden being 5 square yards bigger. If you are German, be sure to write at the end of your reply

In ze fatherland, vee hev vays of knowing zees sinks

Difficulties

My programming course is going well. I am learning the language c# and am having no trouble implementing abstract classes, void functions, public and private variables etc. It all makes sense, and I was surprised to see the difficulties that some people in the course have.

Today came the first really difficult thing: booking an appointment for an exam. I have to ring a number which could connect me to anywhere, speak to whoever answers the phone, and book an appointment for a centre I've never been to. For some reason this fills me with dread. I will do this tomorrow morning.

The other hard thing this week has been doing the washing. The weather is warm but humid and each evening it threatens to rain. Having managed to start the machine and remove the washed clothes, I decided to hang them outside, but it thundered and they got very wet. The next time I think I'll just put the dirty laundry on the dryer, throw a handful of soap flakes over it and wait until it gets washed and dried by mother nature.

(I wrote this about 3 weeks ago)

Eternal Postdoc

I have started a training program as a data bank systems developer. I now spend 6 hours a day learning programming techniques in the language c#. The people on the course are all unemployed, but come from a mixture of backgrounds. Some have broken off a computer studies degree, some were working in the IT field and made redundant, and some are unemployed academic types. I'm one of two former particle physicists on the course.

I went to lunch with "Karl", who has spent the last 20 years at the Ruhr-University of Bochum. He studied there, did his PhD there, spent 8 years as a post-doc there, and is now unemployed. I only managed one year as a post-doc, but maybe completely failing to fit in was a blessing. I don't want to suddenly wake up and realise that I'm 37, unemployed, having spent 8 years treading the concrete flagstones of the university. I think the German Chamber of Commerce should give Karl a job as a "Ghost of Postdoc future". He could spook the corridors of university departments showing what will probably happen to students if they never set off into the real world. He could quickly scare them into getting a job far from the university.

On second thoughts, there is no need to pay someone to do this. Every university department I've ever been in had their own version of Karl. Not all are unemployed, some are happy enough, but they all give the air of stagnation.