|
|
Saturday, May 31st, 2008
| |
10:13 am - Why driving in Germany is difficult.
|
Driving in Germany is difficult for two reasons. First, German roads are organized for the drivers who never take their eyes from the road and who are able to read quickly and respond to all the signs and all the markings on the pavement. American roads, on the other hand, are designed for drivers who will be talking on their cell phone, changing the radio station, and lighting a cigarette all at the same time. As a result, our lanes are wide, our speeds are low, and we use stop signs frequently. In Germany, if you take your eyes from the road for a moment, you can miss a sign and the consequences can be quite bad. This is because German drivers expect that everyone around them will be following the rules exactly whereas American drivers expect that everyone around them will be breaking the rules. So, for instance, at a four way intersection in our neighborhood, the priority is to the right and there are no stop signs. This means that cars enter the intersection looking only to their right for traffic and they do not come to a full stop. If you are coming from the left and do not know this, it can be trouble.
Second, related to this point, no speed limit on the autobahn is tricky but not for the reason often cited. Usually when non-Germans complain about the autobahn they talk about cars appearing out of nowhere in the fast lane while they are trying to pass someone at a more moderate speed. This is certainly true. If you are driving at 130km/hour, you can look into your rear-view mirror, see nothing, signal to pass, and before you finish a BMW traveling at 220km/hr is flashing its brights at you while you struggle to finish the pass. However, on the new highways with 3-lanes in each direction, you really don't need to enter the fast lane. The real problem, however, is that the speed limit does not stay unlimited. It constantly changes. It regularly drops to 120 or 130 and can drop to 80 or even 60 if work is being done. If you miss the one sign (and they only use one) to note that a speed limit is in effect, then you risk a ticket. And if you miss the one sign indicating that the limits are lifted, then you won't be told again until there is once again a limit. Note - there is no sign that says the speed it unlimited. Rather, there are only signs that say the previous limit is canceled (it consists of a circle with four black lines running through it).
Anyway...I'm in France now so it doesn't matter.
S.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Sunday, January 20th, 2008
| |
11:06 pm - A Tale of iTunes, Movie Rentals and Ex-Pat Life
|
I received an e-mail yesterday morning announcing movie rentals via iTunes. As ex-Pats who very much miss going to the movies and who sometimes struggle to find and rent the latest movies, this was much anticipated and excellent news.
So, right away I found a movie I have been wanting to watch for some time - The Lives of Others - a movie based on the Stasi (the state police) of former East Germany. I clicked to rent it and was redirected to the German iTunes because that was where my account was based (based on my credit card). The way Apple handles conflicting copyright laws in a web based technology that knows no borders is to assume that you are a citizen of the nation where you have a credit card. Usually this is ok, but it in this case it also means having to navigate the site in German (D still apparently has items in a shopping cart she can't figure out how to access) and it means that some content is not available (like the movie I wanted to rent).
Next step, switch my account to the US. Fortunately, we keep a credit card with a US address. This credit card, however, was not valid because we had to call to activate it, and you have to call from your "home" number. So, I called "home" and asked my mother-in-law if she could please call and activate our cards. She said she would after breakfast. That was fair. I waited for the time I thought coffee, toast, and eggs could reasonably take and tried again. I can't really explain all the little details and minor frustrations this required, but once I switched my credit card, then my country, and finally my title from "Herr" to "Dr." Apple seemed to agree that I was no longer in Germany. So back I went to rent my movie.
At that point iTunes explained to me that this rental could only be done with the new version of the software. So, ok, I downloaded the latest version. It was big and took some time to both download and install, but I had other things to do around the house and it went smoothly. Back I went to rent my movie with the latest. Not so fast, iTunes now told me that my machine was not registered with my account. I suppose to help prohibit theft of copyrighted material, music and video purchased from iTunes can only be played on "your" machine. Fortunately they allow more than one machine - 5 in fact. As someone who regularly rebuilds my machines, a limit of five worries me (I use five different computers as it is now), but I went ahead and registered my second machine.
Once I did that, my credit card was charged, the movie was rented, and the download began. I think it was about a 1.5gb download, and I can't say exactly how long it took but it was something like 2.5 hours (about as long as it takes to watch the movie in fact). I was very glad I started this whole process at noon so that after dinner we could watch our movie.
The download went smoothly, but I have to say that the viewing experience was only ok. I have a Pentium 4 laptop running at 2.66ghz, but still the movie hesitated at times for brief but noticeable moments. Shutting down the one other process I was running helped a little but did not solve the problem. More importantly, and I will have to read more on this, it looks like you have to use the iTunes player, and there are absolutely no bells and whistles. You cannot, for instance, turn-off subtitles. Downloading a movie too means no extras, no deleted scenes, no theatrical trailer, etc. I miss that.
I recently read a review that said the debate between HD DVD formats was a non-issue because very soon now we will stop storing our movies on plastic anyway. Clearly this is a step in that direction, but my take is that it still has a way to go. Still, it gives us one more option and a little more flexibility to decide late in the day what movie we might want to watch.
By the way, The Lives of Others is an excellent movie. I highly recommend it.
S.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| |
11:31 am - Egypt
|
I'm just back from one month in Egypt working in the desert. It went well. To pass the off-time I took a lot of photos, some of which I recently posted on my Flickr account. Click here to go to the set. Enjoy. S.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Sunday, October 28th, 2007
| |
10:10 pm - Greece
|
It was suppose to have been the last big blow-out vacation before the little one gets here. The good news is that it was great fun. We hiked and boated along the south coast of Crete for nearly two weeks and then visited with the family in Athens for a few days. The bads news is that we might have time to do another one of these before the little one arrives (see below).
Click here to see the set (plus photos from the year before).
S.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| |
10:02 pm - Hobby show at the Messe
|
Once again I visited the hobby show at the Leipzig convention center. Great fun. Lots of model trains, planes, boats, trucks, etc. I posted some photos on my Flickr site.
Click here to go to the set.
S
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| |
9:49 pm - Adoption News
|
There is no news really. There are, however, lots of rumors about wait times. I have to say that I have been pretty much in denial about the wait times, and the answers I give when people ask are not based on the most current information. There are blogs where people try to track the time between your paperwork arriving in China and when you receive a referral (the wait time). Right now more requests are going in than referrals coming out of China. Apparently the recent rule changes were an attempt to address the request side of the equation. Hopefully, now the referral side will make up for lost ground.
In the mean time we have started making inquiries about a second child. Our worry is that given the wait time, we could be too old to adopt a second child.
S
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Saturday, September 8th, 2007
| |
5:02 pm - The Brown Envelope
|
For those of you looking for news of the adoption, we received our brown envelope. This took us by surprise. No one had told us about the brown envelope. Did it mean things were moving faster? D did some quick internet research and learned that the brown envelope is a package of papers we need to take with us to China. These papers are issued by the US consulate in China once the Chinese authorities notify them that we are requesting an adoption. It is all perfectly normal, and it means our application is proceeding as it should.
Deep breaths.
S.
current mood:  calm
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| |
4:35 pm - De-Lurking
|
I de-lurked the other night for the first time in all my internet hours. It was completely by accident. I really did not want to do it. I have to say, though, it was pretty exciting and now I think I might be hooked. I was looking for a computer, I pressed the wrong key, and there I was seconds later "facing" another human somewhere in the world. I almost panicked and exited, but instead I played "Strelz" and promptly lost my first internet chess game.
Of course millions of people interact with others over the internet each day and my friend Brad has been telling me of the joys of flying WWII planes against others for years. Somehow I preferred to stay on the sidelines, watch what others were doing, and, well, lurk. Then I found a nifty site to play chess on-line, but it wasn't actually that good and in fact recommended that I go elsewhere. That took me to here where a server manages games for internet players (by passing moves back and forth, matching players, etc.). A few clicks later I discovered some front-ends that were written (and donated) to interact with this server, and a few days and several games later I have an on-line chess ranking that isn't terribly different from the one I had 20 years.
S.
current mood: pleased
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Monday, September 3rd, 2007
| |
7:48 pm - Fate Smiles on Elias
|
Sunday we had brunch with friends at a place called Bobbie's. A friend and her husband, Elias, arrived and asked me if I was happy the meetings I had helped organized were over. I said I was and talked about how tired I was. At about that moment, my cell phone rang. It was a meeting participant and long-time friend who called me from the airport and said "Slim, I can't find my passport and my plane leaves in less than an hour." I told him I would see what I can do, hung-up and turned to Elias. "Do you have your car here now? We have to go to the hotel and look for a passport." (Please note that I don't own a car, and Elias is one of the few friends we have that does own a car) In this case, his car was a 2-day old 300 series BMW. Wow. We raced through the city streets to the hotel. After some delay, they sent someone to the room and, much to my surprise actually, they returned with the conference program, the lid to a bottle of scotch, and the passport. We jumped into the car and headed for the highway. On the way, we pretty much did the speed limit, but once on the highway Elias opened it up. Imagine this - a country where the highway has no speed limits, 2 exits to the airport, a 2-day old 300s series, good weather, and no serious curves. What slowed us down at first was another 300 series BMW in the fast lane doing 220 km/h. Eventually they pulled over, and we hit 250 km/h (150mph)(the computer keeps the car from going any fast than that - the speedometer goes only to 260 km/h). Wow. Picture other cars doing the French speed limit of 130 km/h (about 80 mph). We passed them like they pass a person standing still. The impressive thing is that even though the engine was turning over 6000rpm (I think it was more like 6500rpm), the only sign of speed we had was how fast the dashed lines came at us. There was no sound of the motor and no increased wind noise. It was pretty amazing. The short of it is that we made it to the airport on time and delivered the passport.
Aside from an opportunity to go that fast, my favorite moment was watching Elias explain to his wife that he HAD to go that fast otherwise my friend would have missed his flight. Fate truly smiled on Elias that day.
S.
current mood: pleased
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Saturday, June 9th, 2007
| |
6:30 pm - We are LID
|
We received are LID (see below) notification yesterday! Like so many things in life, it came at a moment when we couldn't really celebrate like we should, but it is a good feeling. Now we wait. We wait, and we learn everything we can about China and the special needs of adopted children.
Everyone wants to know how long we wait (see below). It is just impossible to say. We can only say how it was in which case it will be summer 2008 or later.
S.
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, June 5th, 2007
| |
10:44 pm - Living the Euro Life
|
What does that mean? Well tonight it meant getting off work, hoping on my black, Dutch, 2-speed bike, peddling over to the Hit market, and buying what I needed to barbeque. I then rode across town to our kleingarden past the new Mercedes show room with its tower of cars, past the strange, round abandoned natural gas storage buildings, past communist era apartments in dull earthen colors stained slightly black, past beautifully restored turn of the last century apartment buildings with rich art nouveau styling, and into the park along the canalized river to our garden plot. It meant cutting the grass with our push mower while the coals heated, drinking a Pils and then a Schwartz beer, and eating three Thuringer sausages with little rolls. It meant saying “Gutten Abend” to the neighbors, listening to NPR stories on my Ipod, watching the crows come out, picking radishes, and enjoying the ever so slowly fading evening light. When I road home after nine I still didn’t need my headlight. Not a bad life.
S.
current mood: content
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| |
10:43 pm - LID and other acronyms
|
As most of you know by now, our paperwork is in China! We are DTC (Dossier to China). When it happened, it happened fast. I received the news as an SMS (Short Message Service) from D (not telling) who was in the US (you know that one) while I was working on removing an AMH (anatomically modern human) skull in Morocco. Life can be strange sometimes.
What we need now is our LID - logged in date. Our paperwork has passed any number of bureaucratic hurdles and we have reason to be optimistic. It now sits in an IN box in China. Within 30 days of its arrival, the Chinese authorities will reach our paperwork, assign it a number, and notify our agency. That is when we are LID and at that point, I believe, we have passed our last potentially disqualifying hurdle.
After that we have a potentially long wait until DOR (date of referral) - the day when la petite chinoise is referred to us. I took a look at some web sites that talked about referral wait times. Then I realized that there is really no use. It will be a long wait. We are using the time to learn as much as we can about China. Feel free to send us your favorite baby book too.
After DOR is DOT (date of travel), TG (travel group), and TA (travel approval). But we can learn about those later.
S.
current mood: calm
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Wednesday, May 9th, 2007
| |
3:51 pm - More Progress
|
We just received news that our documents have been delivered to the US State Department in Washington, D.C. The courier will pick them up on Friday.
S.
current mood:  anxious
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Monday, May 7th, 2007
| |
8:09 pm - May 18th
|
I promised an adoption update and here it is. On Thursday last we sent off our paperwork to our paperwork specialist in America. This was after going to the Consulate on Wednesday morning to have four more documents notarized by one of the actual consular officials (he is being shipped off to Indonesia next month). As far as we could tell, at that moment we had done everything we had to do for our paperwork.
Today we received word from our paperwork specialist that our documents are going tomorrow to Washington DC, then off to Texas (our adoption agency) and from there to China - projected date - May 18th! May 18th! If all goes well, we will have our papers in China on May 18th!
S.
current mood: happy
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, May 1st, 2007
| |
6:07 pm - Spring in Leipzig
|
What a great long weekend. We went on an approximately 35km bike ride between two towns east of here on Saturday. It was a trip organized by D's former German teacher. The scenery wasn't quite as nice as the last one we did, but it was great to be out. We ate lunch beside an old chateau and the river. The trip ended with a ferry ride across the river.
On Sunday we organized to picnic at the garden. This was the first time I had managed to be there for a barbeque. We cleaned more around the house and the yard and thoroughly enjoyed the weather.
Monday was a quite day in our apartment. I did some work, and we generally took care of business. But we were back in the garden today, Tuesday, for a lunch barbeque with friends. The weather here is amazing - high teens celsius with perfectly blue skies. After lunch I painted some more on the inside. Photos soon.....
S.
current mood: content
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Monday, April 30th, 2007
| |
4:49 pm - Morocco 2007
|
I have been to Morocco twice already this year and will be there again in a couple weeks. Some photos taken while working and while vacation are in a new set called Morocco 2007.
We should have an adoption update soon. Very soon. We have one more trip to the US Consulate on Wednesday morning and then we fax what we believe to be our last bits of paperwork to the US. That is not the last step, but it is getting close.
S.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Sunday, January 14th, 2007
| |
2:40 pm - Egypt
|
I'm just back from two and a half weeks in Egypt. It was a good trip. We were there to study finds from previous seasons, and we completed the work. Nearly all of my time was spent in the field house (aerial photo of the dig house) and so my photos are all taken from there and from the ride back to Cairo.
S.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Saturday, December 23rd, 2006
| |
10:55 pm - OmU
|
Usually we go to Berlin because there they have a movie theatre that shows only original language films (OmU) and most of these are in English. Leipzig has OmU movies too but only on certain days, the movies aren't necessarily in English, they aren't necessarily recent releases, and you have to keep a close eye on the various art theatres to catch one.
So we were so excited when our friends told us that a new release was playing Saturday night here. The punch line to this story is that the movie was Babel. The name is a good hint as to where this story is going. Sure, it is an American movie staring Brad Pitt, but the story line takes place in Morocco, Mexico and Japan and they use subtitles for all the non-English speakers. I had mentioned to D. that some of the movie might be in Arabic with German subtitles. She said that would be ok because then we will feel the same confusion as Brad Pitt's character. Well, I felt it.
S.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Friday, December 22nd, 2006
| |
10:55 pm - Berlin
|
We went to Berlin on Thursday mostly to take care of adoption business but also to have some fun. We started at the consulate and had five documents notarized. It was expensive but easy to do. We know the drill by now (see entry below for visiting Frankfurt consulate): leave everything but the papers in a train station locker along with any electronics, carry your papers in an envelope only, and show your passport to avoid the visa line.
For the rest of the day we explored neighborhoods south of downtown. We started there because we were looking for more antique furniture shops. Later in the day we explored the main shopping district and did some Christmas shopping for D. The last two trips to Berlin have been fun because we got away from the same old districts and discovered areas that were new to us.
To go there and back we took the ICE (Inter-City Express). They have recently improved the tracks and it now takes just one hour. ViaMichelin says it takes two hours and 11 minutes to cover the 120 miles by car. This train moves. Apparently elsewhere in Germany they have trains that go over 180mph. The windows automatically darken when the train reaches a certain speed to keep people from getting bothered by it.
S.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Monday, December 18th, 2006
| |
8:16 pm - Progress
|
We worked all weekend on moving the adoption forward and today we saw some real progress.
We are just back from the doctor with our new health reports, blood tests, HIV, etc. We will take these documents to Berlin on Thursday to have them notarized (again), and they will be valid for another nine months. As a bonus, I learned, for the first time, that I am blood type-A. Good to know.
We also wrote and heard back from our case worker in Frankfurt who is taking care of our I-600 paperwork (see entries below). In an amazing coincidence, our case is being adjudicated today, and if the decision is favorable the paperwork will go out today or tomorrow. Wonderful.
There is a possibility that D's birth certificate is in a pile of mail at her mother's house. We are waiting to hear more on that. And we expressed mailed the new marriage certificate request off to her today.
D also called the Greek consulate and learned what step needs to be taken next for her Greek citizenship. She is very close. This may seem unrelated to the adoption, but it is in fact quite important. If D can become Greek prior to the adoption, then our child will have dual citizenship - American and Greek (and European). It is something we very much want to do for her.
Lastly, tonight we hope to talk to our case worker at the adoption agency to clarify a number of questions we have.
S.
current mood: accomplished
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92){kind=small}
surf3s's journal
