Jul222008
Wow, watch this and stop trusting me ;). The text says that this film was screened to American GIs before they started their missing in Germany.
Too bad that there are no movies like this about Vietnam, Afghanistan or Irak. I guess the Germans must have undercut the US and continue “the vicious peace-war cycle” there.
But there are other funny “documentaries” like this ;).
May132008
AT&T sucks, that’s all that I can say now. Not only that their name servers are kind of broken (resolving is very unreliable and takes forever sometimes), but their customer service is really bad. So I wanted to perform a simple task … change the name of the account holder, i.e., my roommate moved out and I wanted to “take over” phone and internet. I called them on a Friday … 30 minutes and two people on the phone later, I thought everything would be fine. I thought. They told me weird stories that there needs to be an internet downtime of a week in order to change it, but we figured something out that this would not happen (don’t cancel the old account before the new one is “ready”). Should be a standard procedure. My internet connection vanished the following Tuesday *DARN* idiots. Ok, I called them again and they told me that I quit service. Great, I didn’t! I asked them to re-establish it as fast as possible. But hah! I realized that there was no name change at all (the account was still on Matthews name) – but I did not care, I wanted internet back. They told me that they could not post a new order because the old one (the disconnect) was still not finished. WTF! Why does it *FIRST* disconnect me and then processes the order for several days preventing a re-connection *ARGH*. I called them every day and finally, on Thursday, they could post a new order that should be executed by the following Tue (wow, they need 6 days to fix a freaking account). The whole thing was just a matter of giving me a new password. Ok, I waited …. spent the weekend in the lab :-/. Tue evening came and the net was not back … of course … idiots. So I called again. They told me that I need to go to some webpage and that I need Internet Explorer for that. I tried Firefox on Linux and failed because they used some stupid (wrong) JavaScript for the “Next” button on this terrible webpage. Oh man, and the people on the phone were way to stupid to deal with this situation. So I gave up (after 45 minutes) and asked my roommate to borrow his laptop. We logged in and – voila – the button worked. This terrible webpage *FORCED* us to install some Yahoo toolbar stuff thingie. Oh man, AT&T forces you to install stuff you don’t need in order to get IP access. Idiots! It finally worked …. never ever AT&T again.
Apr122008
Oh *MAN*. I thought the German tax system is complicated. But it’s a joke compared to US one. Everybody has to file taxes to the US (IRA) *AND* all the states *and* counties he worked in. Man, so I had to file federal tax, Indiana tax and county tax (fortunately part of the Indiana tax … so they’re not completely brain-dead). I wasted a *whole* day trying to understand the issues with my visa status and bla bla bla. I didn’t only waste my day but also IU’s tax expert’s day. They’re very very very friendly here, but my case is extremely complicated (I changed visa status). The quintessence: I need to go back to J-1 asap.
Why? Because I am freaking poor now, after I paid my due to the government. But hey, I got a tax return from Indiana … this is so weird. It’s also weird that foreigners can not deduct educational costs (tuition) from their taxes. It’s actually rather unfair, because US citizens can deduct this, and they also get much much more standard deduction :-(. I had $631 as standard deduction and a collegue (US citizen) had more than $5000 -> *ARGH*. Anyway, the taxes are still rather low compared to Germany. All in all (federal, state and county), I paid less than 13%.
I mailed it in today … I hope they’re happy (and can read my handwriting on the state tax forms).
Feb42008
if you do it yourself and make sure that you’re not ripped off!
I’ve been to the Saraga market in Bloomington – yeah! I am so proud of myself. I was actually the only non-asian in this market and people looked weird at me :-). And of course – I had no idea what I bought (just asked other customers). But I got excellent Chinese green tea and original Japanese green Tea leaves (not tested yet). I guess I’ll go there more often, I even found this weird Japanese “Bonito” (or so) fish stuff.
… and then Kroger wanted to ripp me off … forr the 4th time. So I had an item that was labeled as “2 for $5” and was charged $6.27 (obviously an error – such a strange price) at the cashier. I am beginning to develop the habit to remember all prices and check them afterwards. They gave me the money back without any question … but still! It is the 4th time … this is no coincidence (actually, I’ve not seen anything getting cheaper yet).
And, I finally cooked wakame soup with the (excellent) ito wakame (dried seaweed strips) that Jungjin gave me last year. And it is excellent! I have to do this more often (looks like more Saraga mart). It’s easy too … I just took lots of water, soaked and rinsed the seaweed, added 2 cans of tuna, 1/2 celery “head”, 3 carrots, 7 mushrooms, soy sauce, pepper and the ultra-hot Korean seasoning that I found in my cupboard (courtesy of Miho, some months ago). And yeah, it’s really easy (just wait) and tastes very good (and is nearly fat-free (only the fish)). This is the pot after I ate half:
Jan272008
Yeah, many of you know that I am convinced that US food is just bad (gene manipulation, hormones, yadayadayada), and eating out is even worse. I found my own way to get around it … I cook my lunches myself and freeze them. I tried a new recipe – Japanese style – and thought I should share it! It’s easy and really delicious and your roommates will love you.
Ingredients for three lunches:
– 2 cans (2x100g) sardines or 1 can (400g) mackarel
– 1/2 onion
– 1/2 big cabbage (fresh)
– soy sauce, pepper
– 2 cans green beans/corn or peas
– 3/4 cup cooked rice
Recipe (in a big pan!):
– fry the cut onions until they’re glassy (soft)
– add cut cabbage and fish, fry until cabbage is soft and tastes well
– add soy sauce and pepper until it tastes good
– mix remaining ingredients
So I did it and that’s how it looks like:
The 1/2 cabbage – before murdering aehem cutting!
The onions *hmmm* – I did both recipies (mackarel and sardines at the same time)
Done!
And you’ll have this nice fishy smell in your kitchen (and the whole house if you did it right) which will also stay for several days. And even better, when you re-heat the stuff, it’s going to smell nicely fishy. So people told me that they smelled my food in the second floor of Lindley hall. My colleagues will love me soon ;-).
A note on US apples: *ARGH* why do those people have to wax fruits? I guess to cheat on the customers! I bought 5lb apples, waxed (there were no others) … and they are brown inside! Man, and the bag says: “Meets or exceeds US extra fancy standards, Product of USA”. Extra fancy? Yeah, they have this shiny effect – great :-/.
Jan222008
… US DOE answers to the Japanese Earth Simulator (from 2002): “If we allow the Japanese to deploy our strategy uncontested, we will surely lose the lead in other computational science disciplines.”
It’s really worth a read :).
Jan212008
Yeah, isn’t that cool … now everybody can browse Bloomington’s streets online. Some links below:
1) Maxwell Terrace, my current home, the red car in the picture is mine 🙂
2) I was living here, here, here and here last year :).
3) view on my lab (okok, many trees :))
4) brian park
Sep112007
We’re all kind of used to the mourning of the whole world for the victims of the 11th September attacks. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s terrible but seems a little bit exaggerated. About 3000 people died and two big buildings collapsed. But there have been much higher losses in the history. E.g., I’m sure that there were many days during WWII where more people, more innocent people died.
The thought of the day in farliblog is along those lines: “Why do more media commemorate the victims of Sept. 11th than they did on Aug. 6th”.
What was on Aug 6th? No idea? Right, I didn’t either before I did some research. It was the day when the first nuclear weapon was used to kill hundred-thousands of innocent people. Yes, not three-thousand but more than three-hundred thousand (including people that died later)! Hmm, so what was the difference between those two events? One “ended” a war (that was over anyway) and the other started a war. So what if the bad “terrorists” were a legal nation in a declared war with the US? So would this be ok then? Is there any other difference? Hmm, the methodology was pretty similar – both sneaked in with tactical maneuvers (the airplane carrying the bomb was camouflaged as a harmless scouting plane without weapons). The targets? Both attacks killed mostly civilists, and this was known in advance.
And the best is, the US did never apologize in any way for those attacks.
But this is of course absolutely nothing against the war crimes of the Nazis :-(.
I conclude that war is terrible … just something to think about!
Sep62007
I just want to mention that it is 11:30pm, I just took a shower and I’m sitting topless on my balcony working with my MacBook pro. The view is great and some friends just passed by. Oh man, this is sooo great! I love this place and the weather.
Sep22007
This time some German title :). Do you get it? Yeah, we have an Aldi here! People did not believe me, so I had to provide some proof. We tried to find some Nutella, and I thought a German supermarket chain should have this. So we went to Aldi. Ah, btw. it was 32 Degree Celsius and wonderful weather *yeah*.
Yes, the Aldi exists! See, that’s me and my American car (that proves that it’s really in Bloomington!).
Oh, some random Japanese girl ran into the camera … ;).
Inside the Aldi … looks like in Germany, right? But it’s full of American Hillbilles, weird, huh?
“Incrdible Value Every Day” … hmm, too bad that most of the products suck. The German Aldi is much better! And the American uber-sucks!!! There was no Nutelly, nowhere! Ok, good that the Walmart is kind of close :). So we went there to find the Nutella! And we found it, I mean kind of :-(:
Yes, everything around was stuffed with ugly peanut butter *grin* and the good Nutella was (of course) sold out. But we asked a strange looking but very nice walmart employee (most are kind of strange) and he brought us more *yeah*. So we finally got Nutella … puh, that was hard!