Hey there! I guess I should provide you all with an update. As you might have read in my previous statements, I am currently enjoying the relaxedness of life “auf’m Land”, which basically means that I am staying at my parent’s house in my 13000-souls hometown. What am I doing there? -Well, mostly everything I am not doing in Maastricht: Spending the largest share of the day outside on some physically demanding activity; spending almost no time at all behind the computer; smoking less but consuming more locale-specific beverages (St?ffche or ?bbelwoi); talking German only; taking care of my parent’s house and garden, my two grannies and the dog; and enjoying a simple but hard-to-describe feeling of a certain freedom. Today we drove around looking for a new car for Kai who had to sell his Audi A3 (what a pitty). Later on, Lena called for a phat BBQ in her garden, after which I at home tried to get the pump to work to feed the plants with some H2O. Finally, Lena, Thomas, Kai and Ramona came over and brought dog Nala with them, what of course contributed to the entertainment part of us all, whether the aforementioned humans or my dog Filou. People can tell what they want, I stick to my opinion: Having an own garden where you can BBQ and sit and drink until late at night is simply fantastic! — One thing that pisses me off bigtime is my current Internet connection at 56k… If only I had never started with flatrate! You simply get so damn used to it! — Time to hang up….

Hey people! Yesterday night we were on a nice surprise-party for Shorty because he leaves for Dubai in the Arab Emirates next week in order to support MercedesBenz down there with his crazy ideas one could also call exceptional creativity. Saskia, Alex and Antje had organized the party in the Cafe of the Platte Zaol, stole his addressbook and invited all his friends. Really cool move! I wish Shorty a fantastic time there where the oil comes out of the ground and they build hotels where one night costs more than my annual rent of the last 4 years together…. — I am packing my bags to leave to the Hesseland and stay there for the next two weeks in order to guard house, dog, grandma 1 & 2 and an exceptionally big garden. I will really miss my flatrate there, since we do not even have DSL at home…. How will I survive two weeks without permanent Internet??? Suggestions are more than welcome! — Ah, by the way: I implemented this cool commenting system from enetation. It was a lotta work though, but worth doing it. Should anyone be interested in the code of my templates, just say so and I’ll sent over a copy. — So long folx, you have means to contact me if you want to – stay in touch! N-Joy the summer!

At work, when there is little to do, we found a new ‘gateway’ to sneak into the Internet… So here I write again to thou, my valued audience, from my DaimlerChrysler workstation, glad that I take calls today and do not have to earn my living in the “geistigem Abseits” entering coupons. — Andrea just came back from break and said Turkey is leading against Korea 3:2. Unbelievable! — Unbelieveable as well all that warfare going on. Israel just blew up 15 Palestinians and North-Korea opened fire on a South-Korean warship without cause. Well, of course they had cause, even if it’s just because the whole world is looking at the South. Whether motivated by deviating political philosophy or by religious matters, war is bad! Yes people, it’s indeed that easy! But especially the religious wars drive me up the palm-tree (just to combine a German saying with the English language…) When on earth will people start going in their church and let their neighbor go in another? Or -more radical- will the importance of religion and theocracy dimish so that there is room again for logical and rationale thinking? I agree with Marx: “Religion ist Opium f?r’s Volk!” Opium is a drug, and the analogy with religion is perfect: Your mind centers around it, you become addicted to it, you live your live accordingly, you search for equals, you change yourself, and if you happen to be unlucky, you become fanatic and do things that lack a healthy brain. — I saw an Interview with Guido yesterday night. It was quite interesting how professional politicians are able to come up with complex and sound answers so quickly. The interview was also interesting qua content. Nevertheless, I still feel that this year’s fight for the sympathy of German voters will be the fiercest ever since. Ok, the FDP still believes in 18% which Guido will be trying to achieve this summer by driving through the country in his Guidomobil. Crazy people and their ways… but we will see. The big German newspaper “Die Welt” is currently carrying out a poll on the elections. There, after 11000 users have voted, the FDP has 23.5% and are the second-largest party! Incredible…

Boring: I am sitting at work, typing in stupid coupons for a A-Class lottery of MercedesBenz and could explode about the ultra-slow connection to the Internet. Every time I have to wait for a site-response, I write on this entry. — Brazil finally made it, well done. Nevertheless, I would have appreciated Turkey more for being a real underdog making it to the final! — The sun is shining outside – and I am locked up behind a Eizo 19″… Great.

Hmmm, I guess I have to slightly rephrase my former statement: The Koreans did not manage to beat Rudi’s team. Well, we now have the vice-world-champion for sure. We will see who is going to be Germany’s opponent in the final. Ah, before I forget: I hereby declare that I do not support the behavior of some German buttheads that -for my taste- felt a little too much at home in Maastricht today. I also applauded to the German team for today’s achievement, but that does not mean that one as a foreigner has to setup an auto-corso through Maastricht waving the German flag and screaming “Finaaaaall???????, Finaaaaal????????” — people, this is disgusting! — I just read Mathieu’s statement about his trouble with Marc van Wegberg and I can no other but to express my respect for speaking up. I can tell my own story about him and what procedures he believes to be of truly academic nature… I browsed through my files and will now post what actually happened in last year’s e-Commerce course “Internet Technology for International Business”. The course was easy for someone with webdesign-experience. My course-website was graded a nine, participation ten, but later revised down to 8 because the block-coordinator found that the grades were too good… (no comment!) The exam was ridiculous, resulting in an even more ridiculous comment to be found on the course-website:
“We correct for mistakes, not for differences of opinion. If you have a different opinion about something, too bad.”
-Well, I guess this wraps it up. If I look at the course-website, I gotta puke, to be honest. If I read this kind of academic statement, I gotta puke even more. Statements of this kind support my opinion that a severe “Profilneurose” is omnipresent at the University of Maastricht. Why not simply give a good grade? Do NOT chose this course unless you are willing to take the risk of being told a total fool just because you dare to have a different opinion which might even be supported by a book other than the obliged literature….