Regensblog

¡Hay unos locos en Wisconsin!*

Holy crap: Pledge of Allegiance. Public school. Spanish class. One day a year. “Freedom isn’t free.” Call centers with non-native speakers. “Nationalist oath.”*

Now go read this: http://www.progressive.org/mag_wx042908

Yeah. You read it correctly. Playing the “ultimate sacrifice” card in conjunction with your overdue Chase MasterCard payment or getting that cute top from Land’s End in one size dumber and a vocabulary exercise for a high school class that happens once a year.

Sarah’s observed before that apparently some people are out looking for reasons to get offended. Life must be pretty sweet in Edgerton, WI if a Spanish class exercise once a year is big enough news to cause a ruckus. I am intrigued to see how they tie it into the gas prices next.

Kudos to the school system for standing their ground.

Today starts my vacation! I’m not officially working again until March 31st.

This vacation isn’t voluntary (unlike the involuntary vacation I got in 5th grade… but that’s quite another story). I have to use up 5 more days of vacation left over from last year, or else I actually get paid less. And I’m not allowed to accrue more than 200 hours of overtime (actually, at 150 hours accrued, alarm bells are supposed to rouse us out of our slumber meetings and inspire us, together with our management, to develop a short-term overtime reduction plan). And I’m not allowed to average more than 180 hours worked per month on a quarterly basis (I’m fudging the numbers here a bit, because the HR coordinator in our department read me the riot act and then gave me the 13-page “work time law” on paper for my reading pleasure , but it’s something like that). What’s the big deal? I’m risking my bosses’ status as free men.

Wie bitte? This is about as weird as not being allowed to call Dr. Tammy “Frau Doktor”, which I very much enjoy.

If I work too much, cause some kind of accident (or maybe go postal), guess who gets in trouble? Well, practically, of course, I do (not to mention Sarah). But also the guy signing my time sheets.

This of course is not good for the company; it is unacceptable for people whose titles include the terms “Vice President” to be open to prosecution like that. So I’m taking pretty much the rest of this month off (with thanks to the Easter holidays as well). And it’ll be tough, but it’s better for the company if I just don’t work on Fridays during the month of April.

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.

I’ve been thinking about some stuff on the way to Frankfurt. I’m listening to “When You Ride Alone, You Ride With bin Laden,” an audio book by comedian Bill Maher. I’ll wager the guy makes some serious sense to you, no matter on which side of the aisle you feel more at home in Congress. Check it out.

Here are some points he makes on the first disc that hit home with me this morning:

• Americans since WWII treat gasoline as if it were a life-sustaining element like air or water.
• We throw a tantrum whenever even a small price increase happens on things for whch we already have a pretty good price (compared to the rest of the world) — he names postage as an example alongside the price of a gallon of gasoline.
• Our standards are illogical. We get upset when we have to pay $2 a gallon to go 10 miles in “the Couchmobile” but tip the valet dude $5 for him to go 10 feet.
• Conservation is the only short-term option, but it would help a lot. Overall fuel efficiency improvements to the tune of less than 3 mpg would completely eliminate our dependency on oil from the Persian Gulf.
• What’s up with our car culture? He attributes this to Americans, but from my perspective it’s alive and well here in Germany as well. Why must every new car model be billed “a totally new driving experience?”
  

  “A totally new driving experience would be a car with wings. Otherwise everything is still basically a Chevy.”

  “Wouldn’t it be great to go to a PTA meeting in a TANK?”

• Whose agenda are we really serving?
  

  “Being slaves to cheap oil has corrupted our politics, threatened our environment and funded our enemies and had us doing the dirty work for a lot of royalist dirtbags in the Middle East for a long time.”

This morning before getting on the train, I realized I’ve been traveling so much lately, a frequent-rider card for me would make sense for the company as well. Below are all the trips I have or will have taken by car or train that would have been conceivable by train and taxi in basically the last four months:

October 31: Frankfurt
November 2: Frankfurt
November 8: Frankfurt
November 9: Frankfurt
November 16: Frankfurt (except that I was out that week due to my gall bladder removal)
November 27: Würzburg (overnight stay)
November 28: Frankfurt
[Not sure what travel would have been required of me if I’d not been on vacation until December 18th]
December 19: Nuremberg
January 11: Ingolstadt
January 22: Nuremberg (workshop, overnight stay)
January 23: Nuremberg
January 25: Ingolstadt
February 1: Frankfurt
February 11: Nuremberg (except it got cancelled because someone got sick)
February 15: Frankfurt
February 25: Frankfurt

To be sure, I’ve got a lot of inter-regional travel going on here. I’ve had to miss at least one meeting in Hanover, too (I think I was on vacation or perhaps out during my surgery).

There’s a lot happening via various teleconferencing solutions. Those can be tricky when you’re network-hopping — which I will be doing a lot while network infrastructure issues as a result of the sale of my company from one corporate parent to another are sorted out. And where possible members on our team carpool on business trips. But even carpooling still means someone has to drive, and after a couple of road trips to and from Frankfurt up and down the A3 on Friday afternoons, you learn quickly: driving under those conditions is neither pleasant nor productive. At the smallest level, I’m the only person on my little team in Germany, and I’m the only person related to Purchasing Systems in Regensburg, so I am often traveling by myself. And let’s not forget: the train doesn’t drop you off at the office doorstep. You still have to get from a Hauptbahnhof to the office park or local HQ from the train station somehow. That usually means taking a taxi (not exactly cheap) in addition to the cost of the train ticket (even if it’s reduced by the frequent-rider card). From what I’ve heard, public transportation (bus, subway, or tram) to/from the train station at any of these office I’ll be visiting regularly is really only viable in Regensburg.

So, I’ve decided to ask my company to spring for a BahnCard 50 or at least 25 for me. I don’t really expect the number of road trips to be sustained over the next phase of our integration into the new corporate structure, but despite carpooling and virtual conferencing, I see more travel ahead for me. Our team assistant says 6 trips to Frankfurt and back per year are required before a BahnCard 50 pays for itself. I really should have asked for one of those right up front. But I don’t expect to stop traveling to these other locations altogether over the next year. And over the past 4 years here in Regensburg, along with repeated trips back to North America just to remind me, I’ve learned something important:

I like driving for pleasure on little country roads through places like Provence or Oberammergau or Brenner, but not really very much anywhere else. Anywhere else, it’s loud, a little scary, and generally stressier than I’d like to be.

So here’s to improved emphasis on mass-transit. I can’t honestly say I moved to Germany to get away from driving my truck (and I do miss my Dad’s truck), but I can definitely say it’s one of the factors keeping me here.

Read this on CNN.com this morning:

He has reiterated his support for constitutional amendments to ban abortion and same-sex marriage — which he told the Web site Beliefnet.com could open the door to polygamy, pedophilia and bestiality.

If that is a good way to entice voters in general, then I am really scared of my fellow countrymen. If that is just a message aimed precisely at a small minority who need to hear it in order to vote for him, then I am really scared for my fellow countrymen.

In this day and age, who honestly doesn’t know a gay person or someone who has at least considered an abortion? I am sure everyone has a friend from high school or a relative or neighbor or someone in their lives who is gay or faced the prospect of an unwanted pregnancy.

I want Huckabee and his supporters to look at their family members and neighbors and coworkers who are in committed homosexual relationships or need pregnancy counseling and show me how that leads to polygamy, pedophilia and bestiality. I want names. I want relationships. I want specifics. I know you have a slutty nephew who can’t stop knocking up college girls. I know you have a butch sister. Can you look those those people in your life in the eyes and say “yep — supporting you in legal matters makes it more likely for polygamy, pedophilia and bestiality to occur in our country.”

But wait, there’s more:

Huckabee also told a Michigan audience ahead of that state’s Tuesday primary that, “What we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards, rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.”

Mr. Huckabee, you’re in the wrong country. What you need is a theocracy. Give my regards to the Ayatollah.

Tell me about it. I know you will.

I posted earlier today about a lovely evening we had yesterday with our current and former housemates. Upon reflection later today however, a couple of points in the conversation have raised my dander. Two different people we met for the very first time last night learned we are Americans and immediately commented on international political topics.

Situation number one:

Oh, you’re from America? That’s nice. I was just in the U.S. for the first time earlier this year. Can you believe I had to go through immigration and reclaim my luggage and re-check in to my flight to continue on my itinerary to Panama? It was a major pain!

Situation number two:

Do I detect a bit of an accent? American perhaps? Yes, I thought so. You know they killed those German hostages in Afghanistan. It’s been confirmed.

For reference, Mr. #2 was talking about this story. I had only a vague recollection of the issue; I’m not sure how well informed I am compared to other Americans living overseas. Has this story made news in the USA at all?

Fortunately after the awkwardness that initially followed both situations, I didn’t feel attacked or otherwise singled out, and the rest of the evening was quite enjoyable (to give you an idea, I slept in until almost 10 a.m., and I’m always out of bed by 7:30 — even on Sundays!). I just wish that when we identify our nationality, the first association people make would change from war and terrorism and President Bush and energy consumption to something

• I’d rather talk about, and
• that doesn’t make me feel like I’m supposed to offer an explanation or apology.

Sometimes I want to turn around and ask them if they knew anyone who’d ever been trapped aboard a hijacked plane or right in the middle of enjoying a nice morning cup of coffee (admittedly, the coffee’s better here) when one of said planes makes an unscheduled stop. Or if they could imagine what it’s like to represent a country whose leader was not their choice and whose actions had a deep and lasting impact on their national reputation. How about it, deutsche Freunde? Wouldn’t that be a bitter pill to swallow?

Given the mugginess and the amount of sunlight and how hard it is to strike the perfect balance in our office between fresh air and being able to hear (there’s a highway right behind us), I decided to work from home this afternoon. I just may spend the whole day on Friday working that way. Know why? Yep, because tomorrow is a holiday. Forget which one? Read up on it.

Yep, sorry Mom…I was laboring under the misconception — sort of an immaculate one, as it were* — that we’re all out of holidays here in Bavaria until…Assumption in August and then after that, I don’t know, Reunification Day or something.

And for ye unbelievers — I did two conference calls this afternoon and wrote some brilliant queries out there on the world’s smallest balcony. I should work out there more often.

I thought it was Nicolas Sarkozy, but maybe it’s Kevin McDonald after all.

As previously noted (and probably experienced by anyone with a job), coming back to work after a week of vacation can be pretty miserable. Wednesday through Friday of this week has just been awful. I’ve done my best to work through my pile of crap in my inbox, but it seems like if I’m not there to immediately shoo away those colleagues who think I can/should do their jobs for them, they’ll happily wait for me to get back or try to get someone else in my group to do it for them.

The consequence of this is that I have been extremely bitchy this week at work. I have been snappish and cyncial to those I share an office and boss with, and I downright exploded at my internal customers in an email when it appeared they lost all concept of what is their job and what is my job.

I don’t like being that way. I enjoy my job as long as no one is fighting about whose job it is to do what — but too often my daily time at work is spent playing referee between different departments who are both trying desperately to make sure that they are not doing one ounce of effort more than the minimum and push their tasks off onto anyone else but themselves.

But even while my dad was I here it seemed like I was crabbier than necessary. Do I have a chemical imbalance, or was that maybe the cumulative effect of working continuously from the beginning of December (barring Christmas week) through to the middle of March?* Will I ever be able to return to a non-European working environment? And how do I (re-)gain any ability to buck up, take work crap in stride, and not let it alter my personality? Or (and this is even worse) *is* this my personality (now)?

Yikes.

Picked my dad up from the airport this morning. He got in just fine, and I found him right away at the airport and we managed to be right on time for the bus to Freising to catch our train back to Regensburg.

He’s taking a short nap right now before we head out for a stroll in some glorious Spring weather. I wonder if this Spring weather is really a good thing or a bad thing though (and I’m not just talking about our ski trip to the Vital-Family-Landgasthof Stadt Wien later this week). I’m talking about “climate change” which seems to be the new euphemism for “global warming” which was perhaps the euphemism for “we’ve been shooting ourselves and everything around us in the foot.”

Petition To World Leaders: Climate change is the greatest threat facing our world today - and we are almost out of time to stop it. You must tackle this problem now, decisively and together. Start working toward a new global agreement this year. Set binding global targets for emissions to avert catastrophic climate change. Take bold action immediately - and we will join our efforts with yours.

I signed a petition today asking for the G8 participants later this week in Germany to take the actions noted above. You can do so too, just by clicking this link and filling out a very short form. It sounded like a good idea to me. We’re not asking for drastic changes to each and every consumer’s lifestyle on the planet — we’re just asking for cooperation between major economic powers to get started on making a difference.