Regensblog

Concerned readers might think me about ready to turn in my passport and apply for citizenship over here, given my post from a couple weeks ago and now this. Rest assured, I’m not even close to that. I’m quite happy to carry U.S. citizenship and nevertheless reap the benefits of Western European residence.

Our pal Sara in KC got me a copy of the Michael Moore movie “Sicko” as a get-well-soon present dating back to my gall bladder removal in November. This weekend, we finally got around to watching it. It was quite thought-provoking.

I’m realizing I’ve had it pretty easy so far:

1. a hernia shortly after birth (early heavy lifting?)
2. another one around age 12 or 13
3. an appendectomy at 13 or 14
4. a pretty serious (for the car, not for its contents) car accident as a young driver
5. a couple of stitches-causing lacerations (only one of which involved a chain saw)
6. the aforementioned gall bladder removal with apparently no lasting side effects
7. and, knock on wood, no firearms accidents to date

I chalk this good fortune up to

• parents who insured the family
• a little prudence on my part (I try to eat balanced meals, be careful with my shotgun, and not drive like a jerk)
• a huge amount of luck

What’s luck got to do with it? Well, the country I was born in was a first world country. That ups my odds of living a long and healthy life a fair amount right there — and I definitely had nothing to do with that.

But what about people who don’t have insurance? You can’t really attribute that to bad luck — unless they can’t get health insurance due to pre-existing conditions beyond their control (bad genes? flowerpot fell on your head from 10 stories up?). Or worse, pre-existing conditions they developed in the service of others. I’m thinking here specifically about the 9/11 rescue workers featured in “Sicko.”

I know the movie is intended to manipulate the viewer’s emotions (I got misty more than once) and hey, it’s coming from Michael Moore, so it’s probably at least as “fair and balanced” as Fox News is, but still…some points in the movie really hit home with me. I jotted down some quotes from the movie for those who haven’t seen it.

A random young-looking woman in a Canadian hospital waiting-room:

“We know in America people pay for their healthcare, but I guess we don’t undrestand that, ’cause we don’t have to deal with that. We don’t understand that concept.”

Michael Moore, on the phenomenon of socialized-this but not socialized-that:

“I kind of like having a police department and fire department and the library. And I got to wondering, why don’t we have more of these free, socialized things, like health care?”

Note: if you think you could live with privatized law-enforcement, et cetera, read Max Barry’s Jennifer Government.

A lot stuff this codgy old British guy was saying in the movie was resonating with me — especially the bits in the special features section of the DVD. So we looked him up; he’s a total pinko-socialist-commie type.

Tony Benn, former member of British Parliament on his government’s enlightenment in the face of pre- and post-war economic conditions in Britain:

“If you can have full employment by killing Germans, why can’t you have it by building hospitals, schools, recruiting nurses and teachers? If you can find money to kill people, you can find money to help people.”

More Tony Benn:

“Because if you have power, you use it to meet the needs of your community. And this idea of choice, which capital talks about, “you’ve got to have a choice,” choice depends on the freedom to choose. If you’re shackled with debt, you don’t have a freedom to choose. People in debt become hopeless, and hopeless people don’t vote. They always say, everyone should vote, but I think if the poor in Britain or the United States voted for the people who represented their interests, it would be a real democratic revolution. So they don’t want it to happen. So keeping people hopeless and pessimistic. See, I think there are two ways in which people are controlled. First of all, frighten them, and secondly, demoralize them. An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern.”

Maybe a little commie-pinko-socialism wouldn’t be so bad; at least for the bottom 92% (by income) of the U.S. population. And for the top 8%? I bet they’d still do just fine, don’t you?

Local peeps: let us know if you want to borrow our copy of the DVD so we can discuss.

Have you seen these?

• House of Flying Daggers
• Schultze Gets the Blues

Thanks to a loan from Christina and Rainer, we have. They were both good in their own ways. Both quite sad in my opinion as well.

What did you think?

Last night we saw Ocean’s 13 at the Cinemaxx movie theater here in Regensburg with Rainer and Christina and Matthias. It was not as good as I’d hoped, but better than I’d feared.

As noted on Tammy’s blog, X-Men III was a big let-down.

So far, I’ve seen only 1.5 movies this summer that were not sequels (out of the roughly four total — that’s a lot of movies for me), and they were either so weird or bad that it was painful to watch:

+ die Legende von Paul und Paula
+ The Brothers Grimm

“Die Legende” was a suggestion from Rainer and Christina…sorry guys — I just couldn’t get behind that one. Maybe I am just lacking a certain *je ne sais quoi*. “Grimm” was just dumb.

Tomorrow begins Part V of my continuing saga of voyages to Iasi, Romania. I’m taking my camera with me; it’ll be the first time it travels with us. Maybe (but I doubt it) I’ll be able to get some shots of Iasi by daylight.

U.S.A.: Monarch-free for 231 years and counting…at least on paper. Happy 4th of July!

…but if you haven’t, go see Dream Girls. Sarah and Matthias and I saw it tonight in English at the Cinemaxx (no, not Skinnamax) here in town, since on Monday nights they sometimes show original language movies. Great performances by Jamie Foxx and Eddie Murphy, more or less as we expected, but we were really wowed by Anika Nomi Rose and Jennifer Hudson. Fantastic show — really moving storyline. The Detroitiness was kind of touching, too.

We saw a very weird movie last night at Cinemaxx with our pals the physicists and Natasha and Michael. The movie was called “Elementarteilchen” which translates to “elementary particles”. It was about passion, I think — both sexual and non-sexual. Oh yeah, and about how screwed up people can be as adults after having goofy parents…and how sometimes they turn out OK anyway. Pretty intense stuff. It was good — just weird. Here’s its IMDB entry. The main actors from Run Lola Run were in this one, too (Franka Potente and Moritz Bleibtreu) among other very good performers.

The more important aspect of this was that it was our first German-language movie seen in German at a German theater, and Sarah did very well with her Hörverständnis. I hope this will open the door to more German language movies (cinema or made-for-TV) we’ve been interested in, but weren’t sure we’d *get*:

• Sophie Scholl
• Dresden
• Die Wolke(it’s not about World War II, but it is catastrophic!)
• Mux Mäuschenstill

…and I daresay my work was more evocative, but much less refined.

But still, thanks are due to our pal and ships’s purser Rach for pointing this link out to us. If you think “www.sandfantasy.com” sounds dirty, well, it kind of is. But not like that. Don’t think like that. Just click that link or visit the one below and you’ll see what I mean. It’s perfectly work-safe. Might even up your productivity if you’ve been tuning queries or poring over presentations or fighting with your conference room reservation robots for hours on end like I’ve been doing on the clock lately.

Seriously, I recommend this video — it’s the one that Rach pointed out to us. The music kind of reminds me of something you’d probably not even notice in a therapist’s waiting room, but the visuals are neat.

As you probably know, neither of is a German citizen (nor do we plan to give up our U.S. citizenship, no matter whom the vice-president shoots…except maybe us). As such, we require documentation to live and work in this country — much like legal immigrants to the U.S. This documentation has to be renewed every year. Since our residence permit (think of it as a visa, even though they’re not the same thing) is closely linked to our (my) work permit, they both have to be renewed at the same time. This clever system helps make sure that Germany’s legal immigrants stay employed.

OK, so since the German government wants proof of my employment, I need to submit paperwork to the local Einwohnermeldeamt* signed and authorized by my HR department. I still thought this would be no big deal, since we managed to get it done hassle-free last year.

1. I emailed my local HR contact (Mrs. K.) on 09.02.2006 asking for help. She said “you gotta call/write to the corporate HR hotline, I can’t help you” — so I did that.
2. I never heard back from them, which annoyed me. Not even a “thanks for writing to our automated service; your message has been received and your request is in progress” or similar. So, despite my preference for written communication whenever possible (for various reasons), I called them yesterday morning. A very pleasant lady said “yeah, we filled out as much as we could and sent what we had to someone in your local HR department for completion.” I asked who their contact person was, and she said “hmm, let’s see…Mrs. K, yeah, that’s it.”
3. I then called Mrs. K. to say that the rep at Corporate HR told me they’d sent her everything they could do themselves, and she confirmed that by saying “that’s right, we’ve got it right here, but we need some more info from you in order to complete it. Do you have a job description?” And I said, “I was actually expecting HR to have an idea of the job description.” She didn’t seem to like that. She said “we need to get a job description from your boss.” I said, “he’s on a business trip out of the country, and I’m not sure when he’ll be back. Can I do it myself? Am I allowed to do that?” And she said “sure, that should be no problem.” And I tried to ask helpful questions so that I would know exactly what was expected and not waste anymore of anyone else’s time: “OK, what does it have to look like? How long should be? Are we talking about 3 sentences or 3 pages? What kind of content are we talking about here? Can you send me a template or something?” (I didn’t pepper her with these questions; it just appears that way in this transcript from my head). She said, “no, we don’t have any of that information…let’s just wait for your boss to send it to us, so we can finish off our end of it, and send it to you, and you can take it to the Einwohnermeldeamt.”

I don’t need the extra stress of trying to keep all of these other ducks in a row; I’ve got enough trouble with my own ducks. It’s times like these that I really hate working for a conglomerate. I know there are all sorts of benefits associated with that too, but the little things like this get to me sometime.

In other news, we borrowed a movie from our gym yesterday — they have a small DVD/VHS library with movies available for loan for free for a couple days as part of your membership. It’s a nice perk (our pal Birgit would call it “Schnickschnack” and it would annoy her). It was The Cooler. Sarah liked it. I didn’t, though I did give it a chance when I saw the names on the opening credits. I saw William H. Macy, Alec Baldwin, Paul Sorvino, and Ron Livingston were appearing in the same movie, so I expected it to be pretty good. I was laboring under a pretty severe misconception there. On an ironic side note, I have now seen *two* movies featuring Alec Baldwin and Shawn Hatosy, and they both annoyed me. If a third one comes on, I’m not going to see it.

*
An Einwohnermeldeamt is an office in every municipal subunit where you, as a resident (citizen or otherwise) of Germany are required to report your residence. Meaning, whenever you move, you have to report it to the government. I can’t think of a corresponding institution in the U.S. Usually, when you move, you have to tell someone, in order for your whole life to keep working properly, but I don’t think it’s a *law*. Or is it? Does the Secretary of State (for example in Michigan) require notification? I know you’re *supposed* to keep your driver’s license up-to-date, but what if you don’t have one? As far as I know, you aren’t breaking any laws if you move to a new home with different address and just don’t tell anyone. I can just picture left- and right-wingers alike bristling at the notion that they have to tell the government where they live. back up to the top

A couple nights ago, on my way home from work, I noticed a banner on a shiny new store front. They were advertising DVD rentals with 24-hour access. 24-hour anything is unheard-of in Regensburg — I mean, you can’t even shop on Sundays or holidays (like today, which is why I’m here, now, writing this). So I had to check it out.

It turned out to be Cinebank. I told Sarah about it and we were both intrigued. Yesterday, after taking the rest of the afternoon off and coming home for a nice nap, we decided to check it out. It’s not only 24-hour and automated, but also pre-paid - like that a lot. Here’s the best part: a DVD rental for 6 hours or less only costs €1. Since the joint is so close to us (20 minute walk, max) and open around the clock for rentals and returns, we have no reason to rent a movie for more than 6 hours.

So to get things rolling, we forked over the measly sign-up fee and put some cash our on our new membership cards and rented Punch-Drunk Love, which we enjoyed immensely. It was an eck sellent feelm. One of the best things about it was the score.