Säumnisgebühr

That funny word in the title would be the German word for a library fine. It literally means something like "Missed deadline Fine". I forgot to return a book and had to pay 3€. The book was "The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul" by Douglas Adams, and I think he would have approved of my disorganisation. Certainly none of his characters would have gone to the terrible effort of returning a book to the library just because they'd finished reading it. I wonder what, normalised to the number of times it has been borrowed, the most overdue book of all time is.

VfL Linden 3 - Torpedo Entenhausen 3

One of the major benefits of being able to touch type is that you can pretend to be the Grandstand vidiprinter. Whenever I post a Torpedo Entenhausen result, I always type the name of the club as quick as I can, and then pause for a second before hitting the number. If you don't know what the Grandstand vidiprinter is, this video may help.



I scored two goals to help Entenhausen grab a point despite lying 2-0 and 3-1 behind. For the first I swung my leg at a mishit shot without looking where I was. The shot caught the goalkeeper wrong-footed and the ball rolled just inside the post. The second was a shot from a narrow angle following a short corner. I still don't quite know how it went in.

Anyway, back to the vidiprinter. Whenever I get bored, I like to type my favourite fantasy results in the vidiprinter style. If you're reading this, my fantasy results probably looks a bit static, so feel free to type your favourite results too. If you haven't learned to touch type yet, now may be the perfect time. Use the following simple format, and don't forget the pauses.

United [mini pause] X - Rovers [longer pause] Y

Forfar 5 - East Fife 4
VfL Linden 3 - Torpedo Entenhausen 4
Sheffield United 0 - Sheffield Wednesday 4

SAD

Some people get sad and depressed in the winter. I like to think that I am above such stereotypes, and last year got depressed in the summer. There were a few reasons for this. I'd been in Bochum for four months, and had realised that my job wasn't going anywhere. My incompetence in moving house was also catching up with me. My belongings were split between Bochum and Erlangen, my post was mostly being sent to the old address and I still couldn't remember my new postcode. I hadn't worked out why there wasn't a recycling skip for tin cans in Bochum and had collected four months of tin cans in my flat. These things were all related to being four months in a new city and not giving a shit about anything, but had nothing to do with summer.

Then came the summer. I played lots of football and drank some beer, but couldn't be bothered to prepare food. The food lay on my shelves and was eaten by fruit flies. I hoped that the spiders that populated the corners of the flat would eat the flies, but they didn't. My flat smelt, but I was too tired and too depressed to do anything about it. I'd look at the rubbish, look at the washing up in the sink, look at the pile of clothes on the floor, decide that it was all too much for me and juggle a bit. I learned some good 3-ball juggling tricks, because I could only ever find three of my balls under all the rubbish.

I was reminded of this last week when I looked into my bottle of white wine vinegar. I was trying to clean the cooking pot I used to burn my hat, and wondered whether vinegar would be any good. The bottle didn't have a top on, so I poured some vinegar out, and found that it was 25% fruit fly by volume.

I had cooked some food with the vinegar last summer, but hadn't put the top back on the bottle. I thought back to last summer and remembered looking at the bottle, looking at the top sat next to it, and thinking how screwing it on was too difficult. The fruit flies took advantage of my sloth, but to excess. They must have gorged on the vinegar, bathed in the vinegar and died in the vinegar, for the vinegar was full of literally hundreds of dead fruit flies. I'm sure that I put a tablespoonful of the fly-infested vinegar into a stir-fry last autumn, which probably wasn't very healthy.

Torpedo Entenhausen 2 - Team USA 2

This week we got to play on the grass pitch. This was a blue moon event, for in the grass pitch importance ranking nothing comes below the second division of the spare-time league. For Torpedo Entenhausen to get to play on grass, the following criteria must be fulfilled.

1/ It has to be dry.
2/ It must have rained within the past 4 days.
3/ The womens hockey team must be on holiday.
4/ The groundsman must be in one of his better moods.
5/ Jupiter can't be in alignment with Saturn, unless it's a month ending in 'r' or it's a leap year.
6/ ...

Playing on grass is a chance for diving headers, sliding tackles, dives and overzealous goal celebrations without tearing holes in your knees. I slipped over once, and sent one of the opposition tumbling with a nicely timed sliding tackle. We went into a 2:1 lead with three minutes remaining, but still didn't win.

The Ashes part II

Pet funeral directors are much more fun than your standard undertaker. The one in Bochum has a window display of its products, so it felt like any other shop and I didn't feel like an idiot going in to buy an urn for the ashes of my PhD hat. Once we'd got past the initial misunderstandings (Hut and Hund, the german words for hat and dog, sound rather similar), the assistent was very helpful. He sold me a nice green urn for 40 Euros and stuck on some slightly tacky letters too.

Just as we were finished, the next customers came in holding their recently deceased dog, Maxi. I was quite surprised by this, and I think that the shopholder was too, but only for a second. There were three of them, and they brought in two living dogs too, maybe to show that they were serious dog people and going through tough times, and maybe to prove that Maxi was atypical and that they were quite capable of keeping most of their dogs alive.

I decided that my cheerfulness of having acquired an urn didn't really fit the scene, so I left, wondering whether anyone has ever walked into a funeral directors with his dead grandma draped over his shoulder.

A Theory of Everything

I had lunch in Cafe Konkret and had a theory of everything explained to me by another regular. Volkhard Radkte has spent the past years developing theories of the development of planets and stars. From what I can understand of his theory, things come into existence in pairs, and suns can be born from planets. He has also developed his own model of the atom.

He presented his ideas to a physics professor at the University, who told him "If your ideas are shown to be true, I will personally recommend you for a Nobel Prize". I think this is a fantastic way of telling someone that you're not entirely convinced of their work.

I tried to read some of his book and asked him if his theory made a prediction that differed from accepted physics, and could be tested in the future. He couldn't tell me one. His work also contained a bit of numerology and some Excel graphs, so I decided I probably wasn't talking to the next Copernicus and concentrated my efforts on the Guardian Crossword.

Anyway, here is his model of the Hydrogen atom. I asked him about it, as I did my PhD on something similar. The accepted model of the Hydrogen Atom includes a proton, which is composed of three quarks, orbited by an electron. He includes all these components, but his model has a rigid arrangement for the quarks and has the electron in a fixed position between the two up quarks.

The Ashes

On Tuesday I was on a 6-2 away win football high. I'd only slept for five hours and my legs were burning all day. I felt up to anything and started cleaning my flat. Lying in a corner were the remains of my PhD hat. I broke it when I first put it on; it was top heavy and fell off my head. Since then I broke the broken glass tube, and a miniature cricket bat and some charred remains representing The Ashes had also fallen off. I was faced with the choice: repair the hat to it's former glory, or burn it and put the ashes in an ornamental urn. I decided that I'd never make it as good as it once was, removed the electrical components and cremated the hat in a large cooking pot.

"It's alright, nobody's died." I tried to put the funeral director at ease and reassure him that I wasn't in grief. "I've cremated a hat and am looking for an urn. It's kind of symbolic." He showed me his collection of urns, but they were all so big that I could have put the whole hat in, which might have been kind of amusing, but I'd already burnt the hat and thought 80 Euros was a lot for a hat box. "They're all a bit big. It was quite a small hat, really," I explained.

I wondered whether the guy who bought the original Ashes urn felt such a pillock.

It's alright, nobody's died. I've cremated a cricket stump and am looking for an urn. It's kind of symolic.

The funeral director recommended that I buy an animal urn, and told me that a shop on the Hattinger Strasse sold them. Looking at the Ashes of my hat, which are being temporarily stored in a freezer bag, I guess a canary or rat sized urn might work.

Megalomaniacs Herne 2 - Torpedo Entenhausen 6

I got a bit fed up of writing how Torpedo Entenhausen kept throwing away leads, so I "forgot" to write posts of our last two defeats. Tonight we did the opposite, and recovered from a 2-0 deficit to win clearly.

The reason for the poor start was only having eight players because we thought the kick-off was at eight and not half past seven. The opposition were considerate and only had nine men at the start, despite correctly adjudging the kick-off time. More tellingly, they never got the full eleven players on the pitch.

I ran a lot, and dribbled so much that people told me to pass the ball earlier. This has never happened to me in my footballing life. I've always been a "hoof it up front" kind of player. The Germans call this Kick and Rush, but I can't find or remember any english person using this phrase. I think they call it the long ball game or direct football.

Tonight I also headed some goal kicks in the right direction. When I first played last year they used to bounce off randomly but mostly backwards. Tonight one of my headers from the centre circle went straight back to our striker, Axel, who stuck it past the keeper for one goal towards his hat-trick.

Sheep on the Line

People in Britain, and especially the press, are always amused and amazed when the railway is obstructed by foreign objects. The good old "X on the line" headline is rolled out. X stands "leaves" in the autumn, but in other seasons can stand for other object. Whatever the obstruction is, it gives cause for mockery of the second-rate railway in Britain. Everyone then agrees that this kind of thing wouldn't happen in civilised countries like Germany.

Well, last night a high-speed train on the Hamburg-Munich line hit a flock of 20 sheep and derailed inside a tunnel. A spokesman for the federal police in Koblenz explained that "It is an everyday event that a deer or a sheep is caught on the line and hit by a train", but that the unusually large number of sheep caused the train to derail. I wonder if there a german phrase, "To follow like sheep?"

This is of course not a new problem. Steam trains used to have a Cowcatcher on the front for such occasions. These have fallen out of fashion, which is a shame. It would be fun to see how far a sheep would be propelled by a 200km/h train fitted with a cowcatcher.

The Irish had another solution: On Irish rural lines one of the duties of the fireman "included pelting coal lumps at sheep on the line."

A rural line in Shropshire took a more relaxed approach.

One day, while travelling along the line, her train, which ran slowly enough at the best of times, juddered to a halt.She leaned out of the window and asked the driver what the problem was.

"Sheep on the line," came the reply.

After a few minutes the train started again, only to grind to a halt after a few hundred yards. "What's up this time," asked our impatient passenger.

"We've caught up the sheep,"

ps. Keen followers of my descent into denglish will like to know that I first wrote a "herd of sheep", but then noticed that it wasn't right. Germans have a herd of sheep, looked after by a sheep-herder. The English have shepherds who watch their flocks.

Lost in Bochum

The only map which I have of Bochum is cheap, small and inaccurate. I came to this conclusion while stood with my bicycle in a muddy field with a muddy dog jumping up my trouser leg. I was looking for the road which, according to my map, connects Prinz-Regent Strasse with Springorumallee. I can report that this road doesn't exist.

While lost, I took a photographs of a partially dismantled railway which, according to my unreliable map, used to connect the east of Bochum to the River Ruhr in the souch via the Opel factory. It made me feel at home.

Bicycle

I have acquired an old bicycle from a juggling friend. I had to spend 11 Euros (a bell in the form of a teapot and a stand to stop it falling over) to make it roadworthy. The bicycle has five gears but no gear lever. I went to a bicycle shop to ask for a new lever, but the guy didn't have one and couldn't order one. He thoughtfully changed the gear from second to third by giving the shifter a pull, and told me to dismount and push it back in if I ever found myself at the bottom of a big hill. He claimed that one-gear bicycles were all the rage this season, but might have been taking the piss.

I feel much better when I cycle than went I get the tram. Cycling requires movement, responsibility and has an element of danger, whereas getting the tram requires sitting around, which I do too much.

Sell yourself

Self-Marketing is the key. Be pro-active. Take the initiative. I'm trying to look for a job and am finding it scary. I'm feeling depressed and about to cry.

I read a book about references today and it got me thinking too much about my last job. I've been better since I left and I've not thought about it at all. The book said I should fight for my right for a good reference, but I don't want to. I want a reference that says "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."

I need a job to recover my self esteem, but it's hard to get one when you don't think you can do anything. I will go and see the employment agency tomorrow, explain this, and ask for help.

More on King Franz

Eighteen months after you read it on endofphil, the British press have finally got in on the story.

Ernst Schad 4 - Torpedo Entenhausen 3

No Bundesliga report is complete without a mention of the "Werkself". Literally "factory eleven", it refers to the team of Leverkusen, who are backed by pharmaceutical giants Bayer.

The spare time league of Bochum now has it's own Werkself: Ernst Schad is a leading manufacturar of cogwheels and is based in the neighbouring city of Dortmund. The company proudly claims that it is

Certified by the DNV according to EN ISO 9001:2000

and I'm sure we all know what that means.

The Bochumer Cliche reports:

The factory eleven suffered from teething troubles in the first half, but after a 3-1 half-time deficit they stepped up a gear and had Torpedo on the rack. The 4-3 decider was a typical clutch goal.

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A football related story from the Daily Telegraph, about some posh totty getting a cab to the wrong Stamford Bridge. When I studied in York I cycled to the Yorkshire Stamford Bridge. It was a very nice little village, but could have used a few marauding vikings to add realism to the battle site.


Größere Kartenansicht

Perceptions

I was feeling ever-so-slightly depressed at the weekend. I wasn't unhappy, but was a little tired and dispirited, and most of all I was feeling inadequate.

So when I went juggling in the park on Sunday morning I had the feeling that I wasn't much good at it. The throws that should have gone straight up in the air went a bit to the side, and the crossed throws looked ragged. I could do a trick with my right hand well, but with the left hand it looked all wrong. All in all I seemed to spend much of the time picking up dropped balls.

There were a few kids out with their mum and dad to fly a kite. They were amazed how good I was, and couldn't believe their luck that someone so unbelievably good was juggling in front of them. When the kite was successfully launched (launching a kite is so much more fun than flying it), they turned their hands to juggling two balls. One of them was really good and is well on his way to juggling three balls. This success cheered me, and I realised that I can juggle enough balls to start a minor workshop.

Young children give the best feedback, as they are so bad at fake politeness, lying or hiding their feelings. I know there are other things in which I'm not as useless as I think I am, but sometimes I don't know exactly what they are. Maybe I should be less scared at overestimating myself. What's the worst that can happen?

Schon wieder ein Deja Vu all over again.

I'm back where I was in September 2006: unemployed, looking for a job, and trying to fill out all the necessary forms. I'm trying to do things better this time and not get annoyed as quickly. The most difficult part of becoming officially unemployed is filling out the form which certifies that I had a job. The employment agency gave me six working days to get this form completed, and told me to ring them for a personal appointment by today.

In these six days, I had to take the form from the employment agency to the Personell department of the University, who had to send it to the central administration in Dusseldorf, who had to stamp it and post it back to me. Of course I haven't got it back yet.

I rang the employment agency this morning, but before I could apologise for my slackness and ask for an extension, the man asked whether I had got this particular form. I could tell in the tone of his voice that he knew I hadn't. He knew that it was impossible to do it in six working days. He told me to piss off and ring back when I had the form.

A year ago, I would have finished the post here, annoyed, with Muzak ringing in my ears. Now I will try to think what positive steps I can do...

thinking...

thinking...

I can't influence the speed of German authorities. I can't ban Muzak. I can't decimate the ranks of German beaurocrats to improve their efficiency. I can't redesign all government forms, banning any font less than 10pt and the use of their beloved abbreviations.

All I can do is try to chill out. Say it doesn't matter. Say that one pointless phone call isn't that bad. Appreciate that German beaurocracy always seems to get there in the end.

Here is a reward for getting this far.

edit: I see that the "reward" picture is quite old, and was already featured on Snopes

Snow

I was the only person on the University campus trying to start a snowball fight this morning. As nobody else was in the mood, I settled for throwing snowballs at concrete pillars and juggling a quick 3-Ball Boston mess. I think my relation to snow depends on where I grew up, and how often it snowed there. It is also easier and more fun throwing snowballs if you don't have to go to work.

Kitchen WTF

I looked at my loaf of bread, which was topped by a large fluffy green mass, and wondered how it had turned mouldy so soon. I looked on, and thought that the mouldy mass was too big and too green, lacking the white and brown tints. I then looked more closely and saw it was a lump of fresh Broccoli on top of a fresh loaf of bread.

I managed to buy food for three whole days over Easter, and cooked and ate it too. I may need to rethink my storage system, though.

Muggelangelegenheiten

As you will know, it is possible to make new words in German by stringing other words together. As no hyphen is used to show which the original words were, it is possible to misread the long word. The standard example is Urinstinkt, but I prefer Zugreifen, which can be read either as Zu-greifen (go and grab) or Zug-Reifen (Train Tyres).

So while reading a Harry Potter book in German, I took several seconds to correctly read the word Muggelangelegenheiten. This word, meaning "Muggle Affairs", contains the following possible German phrases which have nothing to do with the real meaning: Mugge, Gel, Elan, Lang, Lange legen, Angel and Gen. The words translate as follows: gig, gel, elan, long, to lay for a long time, fishing, and genetic, which is enough to form the plot summary of a short novel.

Language experts think that constructions such as
Muggel-Angelegenheiten or MuggelAngelegenheiten are ugly. Maybe I should stop reading Harry Potter books and get a job.

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A letter to the editor of the Guardian had me laughing this morning. I think the credit goes back to the Marx Brothers.

Jonathan Powell on Tony Blair (Weekend, March 15): "He would get up at 4 o'clock in the morning and write in his underpants." No wonder it took him a long time to learn how to use a computer.
Bryan Morgan
Worksop, Nottinghamshire

In fact, having looked at the link, the original extended quote is even better

Blair felt he needed to pen his own words - in longhand. "He would get up at 4 o'clock in the morning and write in his underpants, then we'd have to dash downstairs and give it to the Garden Girls [the No 10 secretaries] to type it up... it was complete misery for the rest of us."

Any Chance of a Game?

Following on from Monday's game, where our supporter saved the day by coming out of retirement for 30 minutes, I was intrigued by the plight of Gretna FC. They are rooted to the bottom of the Scottish Premier League and in the hands of administrator David Elliot. The club is in debt, losing money and struggling to put out a team on Saturday. The BBC say that

Just 10 players have indicated that they are willing to face Aberdeen on Saturday as doubts surface over insurance and future payment.

and the administrator is quoted as saying

Failure to play on Saturday would mean we are in breach of league rules and would leave us open to be fined and face other penalties.

The solution is obvious: In the best interests of the club, Mr. Elliot should lose his suit and don his football boots. Surely there is time tomorrow to fill out the necessary forms.