Stories and photos

Susan posts more beautiful photos. I’ve never seen Fresnel lighthouse lenses before.

She also talks about story-telling, and how Manila has enabled us to tell our stories and get to know others through their weblogs and their stories.

“One year ago, a free tool was unleashed: one that made it possible for each of us to tell our own stories. And in the day to day of a year’s time, to experience the particulars, and, in hypertext links, to begin entwining our thoughts and experiences together. This has been A Very Good Thing. And will continue to be so.”

Tests…

AllTheTests.com – “the online test search engine and your guide through the jungle of different tests on the Internet.” Tests are organized in categories, and you can search with a search engine as well.

Link via /usr/bin/girl.

Sunset

Wow! Garret posts beautiful sunset pictures.

Happy Sinterklaas!

Okay, he’s not called Sinterklaas in German, but ‘Nikolaus’. On December 5th, children put a boot (or shoe) out for Nikolaus to fill. While they sleep, Nikolaus will come and fill the boots with nuts, oranges and some chocolate or other Christmas-related candy.

When my parents visited a little while ago, they left us a little present for Nikolaus. André and I cheated a bit and didn’t want to wait till morning, so we just opened it. We got – Niederegger Marzipan!

Ein ganz großes Dankeschön an meine Eltern nach Hetzwege!

We got two different kinds: Marzipan potatoes, whitish Marzipan balls rolled in cocoa so they look like potatoes, and little Marzipan breads, which are Marzipan pieces covered with dark chocolate.

Marzipan is a speciality that is made of grounded almonds and sugar and rosewater, and it’s delicious!

The most famous brand is Niederegger, and you can read all about Marzipan on their web site. They explain how Marzipan is made in the production section, and if you get hungry, you can buy some Marzipan here.

P.S. to World AIDS Day

Susan has written a story for World AIDS Day: Remembering Jeffry Michael.

As usual with these things, English words fail me. It’s a very moving story. Go and read it!

Susan, thanks for sharing it with us.

[I meant to link to this earlier, but forgot… sorry.]

Going to the movies…

Yesterday, I went to see Angela’s Ashes with two friends. We were all disappointed by the film. I had read the book (and the sequel) before seeing the film, and I expected the film to have the same mixture of humour and sadness as the book. But it seemed like they left out all the positve parts of the books: Some were mentioned by the narrator, but almost none were actually shown.

We were all a bit depressed when we left. And we were cold! It was not very warm in the movie theater, but seeing it raining on the screen for two hours made me shiver.

Happy Birthday!

EditThisPage.Com is one year old today, and so are many blogs!

Happy first anniversary, one and all!

Herzlichen Glückwunsch, Al and Scott!

(Um, how can it be that it’s already Tuesday, December 5 over at Scott’s blog? It’s not even midnight here in Germany! Or did I miss a day?)

Blog humor

Here’s a list of cool Blogisms, or is it Bloggerisms? Anyway, it’s fun.

Link via Count Blogula – um, I mean Martin.

Back among the living!

Yay! Garret writes that Sandra and he finally have all their stuff moved and are now in their new house. Happy day!

Exam registration

Yes, I did it. I managed to get all my papers to the office that handles the exam. My appointment was at 9:30 am, but it was past ten before I actually was called in. And I left the office at 11:15 am.

Surprisingly, I had all the correct papers and even managed to fill in the forms correctly. Phew…

Fan mail

I got email from Frieza, who saw my icon on Weblogs.com and liked it because he’s an anime fan. Ahem, I have to admit I know virtually nothing about anime, I just liked it, especially the colours.

On Frieza’s site, I found a link to LetsJapan, a site that features a photo from Japan (almost) every day. So far, there are only seven photos, but I like the idea and will surely check back for more.

Update: It seems Frieza, who is from the UK, speaks Japanese! (I think that is much cooler than a German speaking English, by the way.) He wrote my name in Katakana for me because I said I couldn’t.

   (literally: andorea feric)

Thanks! Now I need to practice…

Peanut Butter

“Man cannot live by bread alone. He must have peanut butter.”

    – Comedian Bill Cosby

Heh. I found the quote on Peanut Butter Lovers. The site has sections on the history of peanut butter, how it’s made , some recipes etc..

While peanut butter is considered a ‘normal’ food in the USA, it’s not very common in Germany. Few people here like it. (Ask André! ) But it’s healthy!

I love peanut butter. I like the chunky kind, preferably without sugar ( = sugarfree). Unfortunately, I don’t get it at the nearest supermarket, so I don’t eat it very often. (That reminds me – I need to go and buy a new jar!)

Update: Hal is a peanut butter fan, too. He says he’s not familiar with putting sugar on top of the peanut butter – but neither am I. Most brands that are available in Germany have sugar in them, but I like a brand that doesn’t: Sun Pat Peanut Butter, made by Nestlé. Although Nestlé has companies in Germany, the peanut butter seems to be imported from the UK.

You can see me eating a roll with peanut butter here.

Election

Have you read this on MetaFilter?

“1. Imagine that we read of an election occurring anywhere in the third world in which the self-declared winner was the son of the former prime minister and that former prime minister was himself the former head of that nation’s secret police. […]

3. Imagine that the self-declared winner’s “victory” turned on disputed votes cast in a province governed by his brother.

6. Imagine that hundreds of members of that most-despised caste were intercepted on their way to the polls by state police operating under the authority of the self-declared winner’s brother. […]

9. Imagine that the self-declared winner, himself a governor of a major province, had the worst human rights record of any province in his nation and actually led the nation in executions.

10. Imagine that a major campaign promise of the self-declared winner was to appoint like-minded human rights violators to lifetime positions on the high court of that nation. […]”

Dinner and work

Aaah, we had a wonderful dinner tonight. André fried salmon, and we had broccoli and rice with it. Delicious!

After dinner, I attacked the paperwork for my exam registration – for the last time. I have to hand in about 40 pages, as you can see above. Note that we even have to hand in the envelopes and stamps they are going to use to send mail. The large one is for the diploma – in case I pass the exams. I wonder if I will get a refund for the stamps in case I fail…

Finally, it’s all done now and I’m ready to go and register on Monday morning. My appointment is at 9:30 am, and I hope it won’t take longer than an hour.

Sunrise

Bonn, December 1, 2000

I took the first three pictures between 7:40 and 7:50 am yesterday morning. The last picture (lower right) was taken 20 minutes after the first three. You can see that the street lights have been turned off in the meantime. And no, I didn’t enhance the colors with Photoshop!

I have to admit that there are some good sides to getting up early, even in the wintertime when it’s still dark outside. In this case, it was not only the beautiful sunrise, but also the fact that the registration office is not crowded at all at 8:30 am.

I had to get a new ID (Personalausweis), but when I first went to the registration office on Thursday afternoon, there were more than a dozen people waiting, so I decided to come back the next day. Good idea!