Already a few days into summer vacation I have finally found a good app for blogging outside office. It is still early season here in Spain so there is not much traffic anyway. So I am sitting here, listening to some good old Sisters of Mercy and watching some illegal immigrants making their living. Obviously they must have discovered a new business-model. After picking crops and selling sunglasses on the beach they have seem to have discovered the meat-market. So if you are black, decently built and broke, you can always try the following: Grab your bike and go along the beach until you spot some 40+ woman sitting there all by herself reading a book. Place yourself in her line of sight and strip down to your white D&G swim-shorts. Before going into the water do some stretching. Make sure you have her attention before diving into the waves for a few minutes. When you come out again make sure your efforts with the white shorts did not go wasted. Maybe throw in some additional posing when drying your body in the wind (no towel!). Now it is time for some exercise to flex your muscles, preferably one-armed push-ups...
Don't ask me if such a dumb strategy could ever work. In the observed case the victim packed her stuff and went away before I could see the finishing move. On the other hand as I said, season is just about to start.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
The Sun the Beach and the Nigerians
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Japanese House-guests from Hell (part 3)
Due to some holiday we just had a long 4-day weekend and we spent a good deal of it mentally reclaiming our apartment from the bad vibes that were left by the psychological weaponry our Japanese house-guests had used against us. In my opinion we were quite successful with our countermeasures so most probably this will be the last or almost last part in this series of ranting off my stress from what you might call an "unfortunate" pick of friends. Indeed I agree that for sure you would (hopefully) find Japanese that would behave differently than our series of worst-case experience. My point is just that there most likely is some hidden explosive power in putting together German, Chinese and Japanese culture under the same roof.
Reason Nr. 2: The Wrath of the Japanese Housewife
A constant source for unrest with Japanese house-guests is always that what seems to be a completely antiquated perception of the role of men and women in Japanese society. To the ingenuous observer it seems to be that the sole reason for Japanese women to exist is to serve their husband. From my experience of Japanese culture I think that in reality this is much more complicated than it looks on the first glance. I do not think I can elaborate on this further here. The funny thing however is that sometimes my Japanese house-guests seem to believe that it is exactly as simple as this. Especially when they come in contact with the very pragmatic style in our household. Between me and Ms. Moonshine there is almost no fixed distribution of work at home. Since we both are heavily loaded with work we apply a kind of dynamic scheduling. For example who's at home first and is hungry starts cooking. Who thinks it's too dirty starts cleaning etc. During phases of extreme stress or workload that can mean one person has to do most of the work but over time the accounts usually balance quite well. Therefore when we have house-guests I do not feel strange when it is me standing side-by side with a Japanese house-wife in the evening preparing for dinner while the crazy scientists stay in the lab until late at night to finish some important experiment. I do however feel strange when the kitchen talk over more than one hour everyday is about how much she hates cooking, how bad her cooking is, how embarrassed she is cooking in our home etc. etc. Of course "I can read the air" but there is simply no way I will come home after a 10h day as a Manager and cook for 4 people while the only house-wife had slept until 11, was shopping, out for a coffee with a friend, had watched 3 parts of "gossip girl" on youtube and the most difficult decision today was which bar to go in the evening.
On the other hand I would never in my wildest dreams have the idea of asking my 1.50 cm <45kg wife: "honey can carry that old laser-printer to my office (which I will go anyway - but I am a lazy bastard) tomorrow?" No matter how Japanese my wife could be, some things should be done by the person with the proper physique.
Good thing is our tolerance level towards other cultures is quite high. Sadly the other way round this is not the case. Sooner or later the "battle of the sexes" happens in our peaceful household. If he comes back late he will be not allowed to eat anything leftover from our side of cooking so that he does not get used too much to good food that is time consuming to prepare. He in turn will find extra humiliating senseless work for her to do to keep her occupied. She will go on strike not doing anything anymore in our household because all men are suppressing women for thousands of years anyhow so it is completely ok, if the only one who has a real job and earns real money comes home and cleans the toilets for 4 persons.
I guess all in all Ms Moonshine and I are always regarded as a threat to the typical Japanese lifestyle. Both ways of course, but this does no make it better.
Reason Nr. 2: The Wrath of the Japanese Housewife
A constant source for unrest with Japanese house-guests is always that what seems to be a completely antiquated perception of the role of men and women in Japanese society. To the ingenuous observer it seems to be that the sole reason for Japanese women to exist is to serve their husband. From my experience of Japanese culture I think that in reality this is much more complicated than it looks on the first glance. I do not think I can elaborate on this further here. The funny thing however is that sometimes my Japanese house-guests seem to believe that it is exactly as simple as this. Especially when they come in contact with the very pragmatic style in our household. Between me and Ms. Moonshine there is almost no fixed distribution of work at home. Since we both are heavily loaded with work we apply a kind of dynamic scheduling. For example who's at home first and is hungry starts cooking. Who thinks it's too dirty starts cleaning etc. During phases of extreme stress or workload that can mean one person has to do most of the work but over time the accounts usually balance quite well. Therefore when we have house-guests I do not feel strange when it is me standing side-by side with a Japanese house-wife in the evening preparing for dinner while the crazy scientists stay in the lab until late at night to finish some important experiment. I do however feel strange when the kitchen talk over more than one hour everyday is about how much she hates cooking, how bad her cooking is, how embarrassed she is cooking in our home etc. etc. Of course "I can read the air" but there is simply no way I will come home after a 10h day as a Manager and cook for 4 people while the only house-wife had slept until 11, was shopping, out for a coffee with a friend, had watched 3 parts of "gossip girl" on youtube and the most difficult decision today was which bar to go in the evening.
On the other hand I would never in my wildest dreams have the idea of asking my 1.50 cm <45kg wife: "honey can carry that old laser-printer to my office (which I will go anyway - but I am a lazy bastard) tomorrow?" No matter how Japanese my wife could be, some things should be done by the person with the proper physique.
Good thing is our tolerance level towards other cultures is quite high. Sadly the other way round this is not the case. Sooner or later the "battle of the sexes" happens in our peaceful household. If he comes back late he will be not allowed to eat anything leftover from our side of cooking so that he does not get used too much to good food that is time consuming to prepare. He in turn will find extra humiliating senseless work for her to do to keep her occupied. She will go on strike not doing anything anymore in our household because all men are suppressing women for thousands of years anyhow so it is completely ok, if the only one who has a real job and earns real money comes home and cleans the toilets for 4 persons.
I guess all in all Ms Moonshine and I are always regarded as a threat to the typical Japanese lifestyle. Both ways of course, but this does no make it better.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Japanese House-guests from Hell (part 2)
With the Japanese house-guests finally out of the house and being the boss of my own crib again (Ms Moonshine was away for a seminar) it was a pleasantly quiet evening yesterday - the right moment to officially establish a new "rule for life" not to ever allow Japanese friends in the house for more than 24h again. That written down on a piece of pergament and signed in my own blood there was still some evening time left to reflect on the actual reasons for that new rule.
Reason Nr. 1: Cracks in the Facade
One of the biggest source for tension when living with friends under the same roof for a while is the actual difference between "seem" and "being". What people "are" and what they would like to "appear" to others is usually never the same thing. Even Ms. Moonshine and I have a certain facade that we use outside to protect our inner happiness. In our case this facade is not too much different from what we actually are. Just since both of us already painfully learned in high-school that no-one likes people that are overly smart we usually play a little dumb and pretend to have not recognized or know certain things that were not supposed to be recognized by the average person. That way we brainiacs are not perceived as a threat to any dark secrets people might have and that way we can get along with most people and well integrate in our social circles. Otherwise we are pretty authentic, because we think it is way to cumbersome to keep up a second public identity.
From my personal experience with Japanese culture however I have the impression that it is the most superficial society in the world. It seems nowhere else in the world the following things are so important:
Smile all day, saying "thank you" or "sorry" without really meaning it, clothing style, hair-style, number of "friends", "invitations", money, number of vacation pictures, reputations of restaurants you go, how many dishes your wife cooked for your lunch-box etc. etc. Everything over there seems to be a competition of how many, how much, how long, how big etc. In such a fierce competition environment people sooner or later must feel forced to "optimizing" their perceived performance. This can be done by omitting certain details about your quirky political views, religious believes, kinky sex life and so on. This can also be done by inventing additional things like friends you do not have, a non existing kinky sex life, driving a car you cannot afford etc. Most of the time however the fake public facade is not really creative, just something like you pretend to have a happy marriage and being the nice guy outside and then go home and beat up your wife. Or you pretend to be the interesting womanizer outside and at home you are just a boring gay guy watching sex & the city all day.
But no matter how your public facade might look like, one thing is for sure. It is almost impossible to keep up the act once you are living together in the same household. After a few days your facade will get the first cracks and your real "you" will start shining through. The bigger the difference between reality and illusion was in the beginning, the bigger the felt embarrassment and problems will be. In our case the Bavaria/Moonshine household had not so many things to hide except maybe the real age of Ms. Moonshine and that at a certain point it was impossible to pretend that we had not recognized that our Japanese friend's Peruvian husband is not a super-lazy ultra-latino-macho with taliban like catholic beliefs who basically thinks women are only born to serve men by all means. If he practically could he would even call his wife to the toilet to wipe his ass off. Definitely he was not the loving caring "much-better-than-Japanese-man" type that he was advertised outside. And his wife was for sure not the multi-interested cosmopolitan but still loving and caring perfect Japanese housewife. More the boring countryside girl that hated cooking and drowned her frustration about the slow career advancement of her lazy husband in tons of beer. And her real hobbies to fill her boredom were not fine arts and lyric but manipulating people, hardcore horror movies and young students.
Naturally this was bound to lead into disaster. Not so much because us seeing the truth since most things we had figured out before already (besides I like horror movies, too). It was more them realizing that we must have figured it, but still tolerate it, so we either must have figured it before already (and pretend we didn't) or we cannot be part of the ultra-hip society they glorify, because we know, but not totally despise their secrets. Consequently two things happened. First they started hating us for knowing their secrets. Second they tried to protect their remaining secrets by all means, meaning not talking to us at all if possible and using our apartment only when we are not there in a kind of shift. We were the night-shift and they started partying at night and sleeping during daytime. Not particularly bad you might think but it will give you a feeling of your house being invaded by someone who thinks you have some crazy transferable disease. In other words it makes you feel like being back in high-school. And I really hated two things in my life: High-school and people that tried to manipulate me.
Reason Nr. 1: Cracks in the Facade
One of the biggest source for tension when living with friends under the same roof for a while is the actual difference between "seem" and "being". What people "are" and what they would like to "appear" to others is usually never the same thing. Even Ms. Moonshine and I have a certain facade that we use outside to protect our inner happiness. In our case this facade is not too much different from what we actually are. Just since both of us already painfully learned in high-school that no-one likes people that are overly smart we usually play a little dumb and pretend to have not recognized or know certain things that were not supposed to be recognized by the average person. That way we brainiacs are not perceived as a threat to any dark secrets people might have and that way we can get along with most people and well integrate in our social circles. Otherwise we are pretty authentic, because we think it is way to cumbersome to keep up a second public identity.
From my personal experience with Japanese culture however I have the impression that it is the most superficial society in the world. It seems nowhere else in the world the following things are so important:
Smile all day, saying "thank you" or "sorry" without really meaning it, clothing style, hair-style, number of "friends", "invitations", money, number of vacation pictures, reputations of restaurants you go, how many dishes your wife cooked for your lunch-box etc. etc. Everything over there seems to be a competition of how many, how much, how long, how big etc. In such a fierce competition environment people sooner or later must feel forced to "optimizing" their perceived performance. This can be done by omitting certain details about your quirky political views, religious believes, kinky sex life and so on. This can also be done by inventing additional things like friends you do not have, a non existing kinky sex life, driving a car you cannot afford etc. Most of the time however the fake public facade is not really creative, just something like you pretend to have a happy marriage and being the nice guy outside and then go home and beat up your wife. Or you pretend to be the interesting womanizer outside and at home you are just a boring gay guy watching sex & the city all day.
But no matter how your public facade might look like, one thing is for sure. It is almost impossible to keep up the act once you are living together in the same household. After a few days your facade will get the first cracks and your real "you" will start shining through. The bigger the difference between reality and illusion was in the beginning, the bigger the felt embarrassment and problems will be. In our case the Bavaria/Moonshine household had not so many things to hide except maybe the real age of Ms. Moonshine and that at a certain point it was impossible to pretend that we had not recognized that our Japanese friend's Peruvian husband is not a super-lazy ultra-latino-macho with taliban like catholic beliefs who basically thinks women are only born to serve men by all means. If he practically could he would even call his wife to the toilet to wipe his ass off. Definitely he was not the loving caring "much-better-than-Japanese-man" type that he was advertised outside. And his wife was for sure not the multi-interested cosmopolitan but still loving and caring perfect Japanese housewife. More the boring countryside girl that hated cooking and drowned her frustration about the slow career advancement of her lazy husband in tons of beer. And her real hobbies to fill her boredom were not fine arts and lyric but manipulating people, hardcore horror movies and young students.
Naturally this was bound to lead into disaster. Not so much because us seeing the truth since most things we had figured out before already (besides I like horror movies, too). It was more them realizing that we must have figured it, but still tolerate it, so we either must have figured it before already (and pretend we didn't) or we cannot be part of the ultra-hip society they glorify, because we know, but not totally despise their secrets. Consequently two things happened. First they started hating us for knowing their secrets. Second they tried to protect their remaining secrets by all means, meaning not talking to us at all if possible and using our apartment only when we are not there in a kind of shift. We were the night-shift and they started partying at night and sleeping during daytime. Not particularly bad you might think but it will give you a feeling of your house being invaded by someone who thinks you have some crazy transferable disease. In other words it makes you feel like being back in high-school. And I really hated two things in my life: High-school and people that tried to manipulate me.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Japanese House-guests from Hell (part 1)
Today is a great day. When I will be home from office our house-guests-from-hell (hopefully) will be gone for ever and never to be seen again. Actually this was the second (and officially the last time) that we - out of some emotional attachment to Japanese culture - will ever help out some Japanese friend in a kind of housing/hotel-emergency case by offering them our guest-room until their condition has resolved.
Not that they overstay their welcome in particular or that Ms. Moonshine or I would suffer from a kind of weird house-rule syndrome that would make living together in the same household for some time a kind of never-ending nightmare. On the contrary I personally think that we are probably the nicest and most relaxed hosts in this whole wide world. Since we both work, we are rarely at home. Our apartment is rather spacious to allow everyone to spread out and have some privacy when needed. We are neither overly tidy nor utterly untidy. We like to cook and don't mind cooking some additional servings as long as it does not become a regular institution. Also we both grew up in an environment where we learned to share basically everything with our brother or sister, so we do not really need to have "our" tomatoes and "their" tomatoes side-by side in the fridge.
So in summary I would say we have everything that is needed to make the stay of some guests over several days or even weeks a pleasant experience for both, them and us and so far this has been always the case...except for when the house-squatting party happens to contain some Japanese.
In such a case the outcome seems to always similar. After some time the atmosphere becomes somewhere between slightly chilly and deep-frozen and when they move out we never talk to each other again, even though we used to consider them as friends for several years.
I know this might sound like Mr. Bavaria and Ms Moonshine are just a weirdo couple that makes use of poor Japanese people's emergency situations to lure them into our dungeon and torture them until they finally manage to escape their doom, barely saving their lives. However there is this huge evidence of numerous other non-Japanese house-guests that we had a great time with together and became even closer friends and they basically always can't wait to visit us again. As a first conclusion, the reason must be hidden in the mere fact of the house-guests being Japanese...
Not that they overstay their welcome in particular or that Ms. Moonshine or I would suffer from a kind of weird house-rule syndrome that would make living together in the same household for some time a kind of never-ending nightmare. On the contrary I personally think that we are probably the nicest and most relaxed hosts in this whole wide world. Since we both work, we are rarely at home. Our apartment is rather spacious to allow everyone to spread out and have some privacy when needed. We are neither overly tidy nor utterly untidy. We like to cook and don't mind cooking some additional servings as long as it does not become a regular institution. Also we both grew up in an environment where we learned to share basically everything with our brother or sister, so we do not really need to have "our" tomatoes and "their" tomatoes side-by side in the fridge.
So in summary I would say we have everything that is needed to make the stay of some guests over several days or even weeks a pleasant experience for both, them and us and so far this has been always the case...except for when the house-squatting party happens to contain some Japanese.
In such a case the outcome seems to always similar. After some time the atmosphere becomes somewhere between slightly chilly and deep-frozen and when they move out we never talk to each other again, even though we used to consider them as friends for several years.
I know this might sound like Mr. Bavaria and Ms Moonshine are just a weirdo couple that makes use of poor Japanese people's emergency situations to lure them into our dungeon and torture them until they finally manage to escape their doom, barely saving their lives. However there is this huge evidence of numerous other non-Japanese house-guests that we had a great time with together and became even closer friends and they basically always can't wait to visit us again. As a first conclusion, the reason must be hidden in the mere fact of the house-guests being Japanese...
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Mondai Meetings (I don't like Mondays)
One of the most noticeable changes of our little "overseas" place being transformed into something 100% Japanese-like in is the total number and time spent in (useless) meetings. Especially Monday seems to be a day I can quite confidently forget about getting anything useful done for the future. It starts with the weekly team meeting which is kind of necessary, transitions smoothly into people-bother-you-even-while-eating (aka lunch-meeting), followed by the company all-hands meeting with all the information about how to correctly fill out the latest forms. It continues with the research-update-meeting, where you usually hear about which nice conferences people went to, what they ate and (yes there was something...) what ultra-boring presentation they heard that might be slightly relevant to "maybe" one other person in the company. If you are lucky there are a few minutes left in the time slot so you can run and get a mug of coffee before you enter the dreaded research-management meeting where you get confronted with things that regular employees better not see, otherwise they would immediately start looking for a new job (for example 1 year plans to come up with a 6 month plan).
On the bright side - it took the employees only 2 weeks to come up with a new technical term for this state of idle pastime at the beginning of a week: Mondai (=something like "Problem" in Japanese) Meetings.
Friday, May 20, 2011
No Clue? - Make a Questionaire!
Today was a quite special day. In my inbox I found even two new emails in the kind of half-threatening, half-asking-for-help style, trying to harass you into participation of a company-wide survey.
Back in the good old days where we still used to use or own brains such a survey came up maybe once a year for some really tough questions like "what food do you want at the christmas party".
Now our company is finally 110% fully Japan compliant and we consequently try to apply swarm-intelligence on almost any new operational issue like for example:
- I got a task to create the company facebook page...
question 1.) Can you explain me what facebook is?
question 2.) What should I put on the page?
- We need to save money...
question 1.) do you know about any unnecessary expenses we could cut?
question 2.) if this is not enough, what necessary expenses should we cut?
Power to the people!
Thursday, May 19, 2011
But this time, really!
Yikes! Being promoted into management AND writing a blog seems to be something that does not go very well together. However yesterday I had one of these life-changing moments (after a couple of mojitos) where you suddenly decide that you are not really happy with the way things are working out currently. Very often such moments go along with a certain desire to change something - or in my case yesterday - change something back. To make it short - I decided that I want my life back as it was before and I am going to start with picking up this blogging activity where I had left it.
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