career opportunity

sebastian (30) is from dessau in east germany, therefore used to be almost my neighbour, and now lives in london, where he works as a butler. his masters are mainly investment bankers and other nouveau riche people with status anxiety, but sebastian himself is a traditionalist from his deferential attitude down to his impeccable manners. discretion is tantamount to butler honour. so far in summary my impressions from an interview in sueddeutsche.de

i was quite shocked at first to find a fellow east german that sounded so... uncritical, unpolitical and outright fawning over his rich clients (in fact, the words famous and rich featured a lot in the interview). then again, maybe the east german experience makes people perfectly suited for this type of employment. i remember a class reunion last october. 20 years! as we exchanged notes on our lives over the past 10 years since our last get-together (who has no kids or more than 3 kids, who is divorced, has the most money, is even famous?) i realised that my fellow ossis had secure jobs in the civil service, the health service, those who were self-employed were employment-lawyers... in other words, they mostly had played a safe career game. i was slightly bored, and very disappointed.

is this craving for job security a ddr legacy? did i miss something? the idea of safety and security over professional and personal fulfilment escapes me. i hope i'm not the only ossi who feels that way. but where do i find those who chose a life not tied to a safety line?

happy english family

as seen by titanic.

definition of crisis

by antonio gramsci, italian political theorist and communist: *the old is dead and the new cannot be born*
a spot on analysis of uk politics and society.

freedom of expression

fitna video on google

because i'm fed up with the double standards and haphazard gut feeling that this country seems to base decisions on (*if we are threatened with a demo we'll gladly sacrifice freedom of speech for quiet streets*). here's the video by dutchman geert wilders, called fitna, that the recent commotion is about.
it's not great, but it shows how religion does cloud people's minds and reduces them to mindless robots.
judge for yourself. as you should!

my first all-italian email exchange

Caro Maurizio,
Ho aspettato la sua risposta da lunedi e, alfine, stamattina ho prenotato un'altro agriturismo. Mi dispiace molto!
Cordiali saluti,
...

Ciao ...
mi spiace ma probabilmente ci sono stati problemi nel server , anche perchè io non ho ricevuto nulla, mi spiace e spero che passiate comunque una buona vacanza.
Maurizio

ungefragt gesagt

ich twittere nicht.
i don't tweet. or whatever you say.

brecht des tages

*was ist der raub einer bank gegen die gruendung einer bank?*

i saw frost/nixon the other day. great film, but made great by the nixon actor. i mean, what was the point of underusing a very good actress to play eye candy, with no apparent reason to be in the film other than show some skin? again, the guy who played nixon was brilliant. he reminded me of someone though. and then last night it hit me. he had the same bitter, disappointed, socially inept face as gordon brown.

brown is like nixon, without the achievements.

twitter

i checked out the twitter website today.
i'm not an early adopter to social network sites. i still don't have a facebook account. that's not because i am in some way opposed to using new media for communication. it's because i have no-one to communicate with. none of my close friends are on facebook, for example. they barely answer emails, for god's sake! some have mobiles that are 6 years old, so forget sending picture messages to that lot. there is no need for me to sign up to facebook, as i really don't want to *make new friends* online. the truth is: amongst my laggard friends, i am the earliest adopter.
the situation is best illustrated by what happened in the mid-1990s. i lived in a student residence at leipzig and wanted to get a phone. a fixed line would take years to install. luckily, i saw an ad at the residence black board by a fellow student who was propping up his pub fund by selling mobile phone contracts. he showed me one brick-shaped ericsson phone with a flap and an aerial, which i could get for free with a student e-plus account. i could even send little typed messages to friends' emails which they would read in the email subject line. free of charge!
so we closed the deal and i got busy handing out my new mobile number to all my friends. i was the first one of us to have a mobile, so i was used as a test case. in the next weeks, i felt like one of those poxy bankers we would make fun of who would speak loudly into phones while queuing at the baker shop. i arranged visits to berlin sitting on the tram, my dentist called me to confirm an appointment as i was having lunch in the student canteen. my phone even rang during class once, much to my professor's delight. he revelled in my embarrassment and quipped *i have been waiting for this to happen in my class* and *don't you want to answer that? it could be important!* while i fumbled in my bag to find the mobile and the off-button.
a month later, it was all over. my friends had received their landline phone bills. the horrendously high charges for call to my mobile stood out like sore thumbs. every one of them vowed never to dial my mobile number again. *you call me!* they'd say.
that's what went through my head when i browsed the twitter website. is there a point in joining if i'm the only one of my network on it? what is the sound of one hand clapping?

pep talk to the brits

instead of using the bad bad word depression today, this is what gordon brown should have said:

citibank, the money-grabbing bastards

i just got a letter from my bank. (this is how many gruesome sobstories begin. my other favourite opener is: *in the current climate...*)
in this case, citibank are informing me that, apart from raising forex fees, they will also impose a fee on sepa transfers. the point of sepa was of course to treat money transfers within the eu as domestic transfers, i.e. transfers without a fee. that's what citibank grudgingly introduced last year (they tried to charge me 20 pounds for a transfer in 2008 and i had to remind them of their own rules). now they want to charge 10 pounds for any sepa transfer, starting from 2 march. a little research shows me that a number of banks basically sabotaged the sepa rollout across europe, by slowing the work down, by missing deadlines etc. the eu was forced to give them another few months to fully integrate their systems. in the meantime, and for a limited period only, the banks are allowed to charge for this *free* scheme. hard deadline this time is november 2009. we'll see...

shame on citibank for bending the rules, shame on the eu for being bent!

snowombat in london

foreign snow invasion

a horrible thought: is the snow migrating from eastern europe into britain, thereby destroying the green shoots of an economic recovery? londoners had 2 days to prepare for the snow (weather forecast!) and yet they decided to just cancel the public transport. as well as public services such as rubbish collection. and they closed many schools. they would shut down hospitals, too, if they could. then again, in times where short-time work even happens in football (an englishman at milan), who can be surprised?

british snow for british people

no buses, no trains, no planes... just snow and quiet all over london.
if the market crashed today, would it be known as *white monday*?