Wednesday, April 29, 2009

German Police in Sense of Humour Schock

I am in a good mood today. I have an extended job interview with an IT company tomorrow, and took a Salsa class last night. When I'm in a good mood I try to make boring situations as fun as possible.
So on the way back from the supermarket, stuck at a red light, I tried to stay on my bike for as long as possible. I started off edging slightly forwards with the front brake on and turning the handlebars to balance. As I approached the bumper of the car in front I stopped completely and used my left leg to balance. All the time I was being watched by a police van behind me and a rather pretty girl stood at the lights using her phone. As my left leg was thrown to and fro, the police van used their loudspeaker to announce something (I sadly don't know what it was), and when I stopped balancing and turned round, they were laughing heartily. The girl smiled, ran her hand through her hair, and carried on texting. The lights turned green and we all went our separate ways.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Torpedo Entenhausen 2 - VfL Linden 0

I have transferred my football writing to the official forum of the spare-time league in Bochum. Most match reports follow the standard procedure of discussing goals, fouls, offside decisions, the score and whether a team deserved to win. The official description of the first half of Torpedo Entenhausen's match this week is:

In the middle of the first half, our defensive midfielder perfectly wellied the ball into the top branch of a tree. The zenith of the ball's parabola matched the height of the tree exactly, and the twigs held the ball in the position where other stadiums have their corporate boxes. The ball was able to watch the match from this position until I knocked it down with a perfectly thrown plank. Because of this, the goalless first half sort of passed me by.

Arbeitszeugnis

I got my Arbeitszeugnis (a kind of public reference) from my job in Bochum today. Last year I wrote that I wanted my reference to say

Mr. endofphil came unprepared into the job, was unable to master life's basics such as eating and sleeping, showed a complete lack of interest for anything whatsoever and subsequently spent 6 months staring into space. His only lasting impression was drunkenly juggling lots of mandarines at the christmas party.


Of course my reference couldn't say this, as it is a product of depression and self-loathing. I'm probably the only person who could write this about myself, and can be sure that anyone else in the world will find a couple of nice things to say about me.

I opened the letter with a feeling of dread and sadness. It was an intrusion from very unhappy times into my present life. It was a reminder of things I've been trying to forget about. But it says some nice things about me. It lists the things I did in the job when I wasn't depressed. This confuses me.

In order to get a job as a physicist, I have to be able to defend my work in previous jobs. I have to be able to live with the mistakes and successes of previous years, and explain how these experiences will be useful for the future. I have to be able to do this without shaking or crying. I can't just pretend that I fell to earth knowing lots of stuff.

Or I could give in to my natural instinct, and say that I failed at being a physicist. I could then do something completely different without worrying about the past. Until it goes wrong again.