I have two computers. You see, I have this really old notebook and a semi-new netbook. I got my netbook when I was fed up getting the blue screen of death on my older notebook. No matter what I did, my system kept crashing and I feared for the term papers I was writing.
I'm hardly a computer genius. Aside from wiping everything and re-installing Windows fresh, I neither knew what else to try, nor was interested in spending the money to blow a fresh breath of life into a laptop that was over three years old.
Enter my netbook.
I originally bought it because of its battery life. (Nine hours, HELLO!) That being said, I couldn't get over how slow it was. As in I would prefer dial-up slow. Still, making myself a coffee while Facebook would load was nothing compared to the fact Word would freeze anytime a document I was working on hit the twelve-page mark. (Errrm: how am I supposed to write a Master's thesis or *cough* a doctoral dissertation, then?)
It must be said that, in the meantime, I was still using my old laptop as a DVD player since I don't have a TV. Not being connected to the internet seemed to resolve the crashing problem, so I just went on my merry way with that.
I'm not really sure why I decided to try out Linux. I suppose it was a mixture of boredom and hearing coworkers and people I know rave on and on about how amazingly wonderful the whole thing is. So, I went an installed Wubi to see what all the hype was about.
It could just be a point-of-view thing, but somehow, if something is not working on Ubuntu, I see it as some sort of let me figure you out challenge, and I don't run around yelling "F-U Windows, F-U!!"
Yeah, it's probably just the attitude I go into it with.
Still, the best thing about Ubuntu is that, all the things that drove me crazy about my notebook that I couldn't figure out (mostly to do with user settings) were suddenly fixable in Ubuntu. (And Ubuntu is awesome for computer dunces like me who likely couldn't do anything more than a few basic things with the Terminal if their lives depended on it.)
I haven't been playing around with it for that long (maybe a month or so), but I finally took the plunge and did a full install of Ubuntu to get rid of Windows.
So far, so good.
That said, I suppose I'm not entirely at the point of no return considering I've still got Windows 7 running on my netbook.
Nevertheless, my primary system is now Ubuntu, and I'm happy as a clam.
(Why are clams happy, anyway? Did anyone ask them?)
So there.
26 October 2012
22 October 2012
Kaaaaaarl, das tötet Leute!!
Mein liebes Pupu,
du fehlst mir.
-Blogger trying to cope with mega-crazy Finnish pangs these days
21 October 2012
Homeless: The Questions People Ask
I've read a lot of different things about a lot of different people who have moved abroad. For both those at "home" in Canada and here in Germany who have a good sense of Heimat, my overseas moves have been troubling.
When people find out where I'm from, one of two questions invariably follows:
"Why did you leave?"
or...
"When are you going home?"
I've left places for a number of different reasons, often good, sometimes bad. One day, when I feel up to telling stories of my individual homes, the reasons I've picked up and moved so often in the last eight years may become apparent.
For now, though, I'll try to tackle these two rather loaded questions.
Why did you leave?
I don't exactly remember how the quotation I once read goes anymore, but it went along the lines of that, in order to be an expatriate, you have to be a little bit brave, and a little bit of a dreamer.
I'd say it's rather true. Perhaps it's not such a shock for people who move somewhere for a specific job (or maybe it is, I wouldn't know), but the idea of moving somewhere you don't really know, where you know nobody, have no idea where you'll find a place to live, or if you'll be able to find work to finance those rent payments can be rather scary.
It's really easy to pussy foot around the idea and plan, plan, plan. I kind of liken it to standing at an outdoor pool with a cold wind giving you goose bumps. You know you have to jump into the water, but you have no idea if that water is ice cold or blazing hot, deep, shallow, or possibly full of sharks. You've got the option of toeing the water to test it out or jumping straight in. Sometimes I wonder if it's just better to dive right in and see what you're dealing with when you've actually got to deal with it.
Moving abroad, even to a place you're familiar with, can be an extraordinary shock in both good and bad ways. It's definitely a fun, albeit expensive, way to see what you're actually made of.
That said...
Someone once told me that it doesn't matter how far away you move, you'll never be able to run away from yourself.
This is true. Believe me, I've tried.
The first time I came over here, I ran away, and wasn't all too pleased when I found out I was still stuck with myself at the end.
The other two overseas moves have happened at certain times when I couldn't take the way my life was going. (The smaller moves have had different reasons entirely.)
There's nothing like an overseas move to shock your system into trying to do something different.
And, though you're always stuck with yourself at an end, living halfway across the globe often (albeit not always) makes your old reality seem a little less real, and thus less painful. That being said, if your past still catches up to you -- which it invariably does 100 percent of the time -- you can sometimes wonder if you're going crazy because the line between what actually happened in your past life and what you wish had happened can become awfully blurred.
Still, it's hard to tell random strangers you left because you were trying to run away from yourself, even though you already knew it would never work. (Yet here I am, blogging that sort of jibber jabber away...)
So, my official reasons:
1. Canada -> Germany: I wanted to experience something new and different.
2. Germany -> Canada: I knew I wanted to go "home" eventually, so off I went.
3. Canada -> Germany: Money. Plain and simple.
All of these reasons are real and true. They just brush over the fact they were part of larger, more private reasons that ended up tipping the scales in one way or another.
That brings me to:
When are you going home?
First things first (and notice the shift from sentimental to a jerk-Kraut in training):
Why the fuck do you care when I go home? I am more adjusted to life here than many foreigners I know. The whole when-are-you-going-home thing just reeks of "Get out, we don't want you foreign beings in our pure country, mucking everything up."
Overreaction, sure. But the assumption that I'm only here temporarily drives me batty.
I mean, don't misunderstand me. Upon re-entry to Krautland, I did not sign any paper that said "I solemnly swear to stay here until my death day". I'm not entirely convinced I want to spend the next decades here. While there are a lot of super things about Germany, I'm often shocked when I look in the mirror after just five years here; the idea of adding a zero onto that five and then looking in the mirror scares the bejeezus out of me.
Still, when I left Canada the last time, I went with the conscious attitude of "enough is enough". You might get why I actually had enough the day I get around to writing some of my stories of Calgary. But, copious amounts of money required for another overseas move aside, Canada currently has nothing to offer me. It likely goes both ways.
That said, I can think of three specific circumstances I'd move back, none of which are likely to happen ever, and particularly not in the near future. So, the answer to your question is, "I'm not going home." (Read: "I'd prefer to stay in my self-induced exile for the time being, thankyouverymuch."
I haven't committed myself to Krautland for the rest of my life, but I'm not going back. Somewhere new maybe, but not back.
Now stop asking me questions, please. I'm not some weird expatriate exhibit at the zoo.
When people find out where I'm from, one of two questions invariably follows:
"Why did you leave?"
or...
"When are you going home?"
I've left places for a number of different reasons, often good, sometimes bad. One day, when I feel up to telling stories of my individual homes, the reasons I've picked up and moved so often in the last eight years may become apparent.
For now, though, I'll try to tackle these two rather loaded questions.
Why did you leave?
I don't exactly remember how the quotation I once read goes anymore, but it went along the lines of that, in order to be an expatriate, you have to be a little bit brave, and a little bit of a dreamer.
I'd say it's rather true. Perhaps it's not such a shock for people who move somewhere for a specific job (or maybe it is, I wouldn't know), but the idea of moving somewhere you don't really know, where you know nobody, have no idea where you'll find a place to live, or if you'll be able to find work to finance those rent payments can be rather scary.
It's really easy to pussy foot around the idea and plan, plan, plan. I kind of liken it to standing at an outdoor pool with a cold wind giving you goose bumps. You know you have to jump into the water, but you have no idea if that water is ice cold or blazing hot, deep, shallow, or possibly full of sharks. You've got the option of toeing the water to test it out or jumping straight in. Sometimes I wonder if it's just better to dive right in and see what you're dealing with when you've actually got to deal with it.
Moving abroad, even to a place you're familiar with, can be an extraordinary shock in both good and bad ways. It's definitely a fun, albeit expensive, way to see what you're actually made of.
That said...
Someone once told me that it doesn't matter how far away you move, you'll never be able to run away from yourself.
This is true. Believe me, I've tried.
The first time I came over here, I ran away, and wasn't all too pleased when I found out I was still stuck with myself at the end.
The other two overseas moves have happened at certain times when I couldn't take the way my life was going. (The smaller moves have had different reasons entirely.)
There's nothing like an overseas move to shock your system into trying to do something different.
And, though you're always stuck with yourself at an end, living halfway across the globe often (albeit not always) makes your old reality seem a little less real, and thus less painful. That being said, if your past still catches up to you -- which it invariably does 100 percent of the time -- you can sometimes wonder if you're going crazy because the line between what actually happened in your past life and what you wish had happened can become awfully blurred.
Still, it's hard to tell random strangers you left because you were trying to run away from yourself, even though you already knew it would never work. (Yet here I am, blogging that sort of jibber jabber away...)
So, my official reasons:
1. Canada -> Germany: I wanted to experience something new and different.
2. Germany -> Canada: I knew I wanted to go "home" eventually, so off I went.
3. Canada -> Germany: Money. Plain and simple.
All of these reasons are real and true. They just brush over the fact they were part of larger, more private reasons that ended up tipping the scales in one way or another.
That brings me to:
When are you going home?
First things first (and notice the shift from sentimental to a jerk-Kraut in training):
Why the fuck do you care when I go home? I am more adjusted to life here than many foreigners I know. The whole when-are-you-going-home thing just reeks of "Get out, we don't want you foreign beings in our pure country, mucking everything up."
Overreaction, sure. But the assumption that I'm only here temporarily drives me batty.
I mean, don't misunderstand me. Upon re-entry to Krautland, I did not sign any paper that said "I solemnly swear to stay here until my death day". I'm not entirely convinced I want to spend the next decades here. While there are a lot of super things about Germany, I'm often shocked when I look in the mirror after just five years here; the idea of adding a zero onto that five and then looking in the mirror scares the bejeezus out of me.
Still, when I left Canada the last time, I went with the conscious attitude of "enough is enough". You might get why I actually had enough the day I get around to writing some of my stories of Calgary. But, copious amounts of money required for another overseas move aside, Canada currently has nothing to offer me. It likely goes both ways.
That said, I can think of three specific circumstances I'd move back, none of which are likely to happen ever, and particularly not in the near future. So, the answer to your question is, "I'm not going home." (Read: "I'd prefer to stay in my self-induced exile for the time being, thankyouverymuch."
I haven't committed myself to Krautland for the rest of my life, but I'm not going back. Somewhere new maybe, but not back.
Now stop asking me questions, please. I'm not some weird expatriate exhibit at the zoo.
15 October 2012
Night is upon us!
I wake up in the dark.
I walk Maxie in the near-dark.
Soon I will go to work in the dark.
I come home in the near-dark.
Soon I will come home in the dark.
All I hear about these days is how dark it is outside, as if it surprises us every single year. As fall is fully upon us and winter approaches, darkness gets to become just as fun to talk about as the weather.
"Did'ya get that? It's pretty cold and dark, eh?"
The worst part of it all is that I get sucked into it, too. It's probably got something to do with my propensity for bitching about the weather.
But gawsh, it's dark!
Mother Nature, I have two choices for you: either bring summer back, or bring on Christmas so I can start drinking Glühwein at the Weihnachtsmarkt with the Mädels!
Thank you.
I walk Maxie in the near-dark.
Soon I will go to work in the dark.
I come home in the near-dark.
Soon I will come home in the dark.
All I hear about these days is how dark it is outside, as if it surprises us every single year. As fall is fully upon us and winter approaches, darkness gets to become just as fun to talk about as the weather.
"Did'ya get that? It's pretty cold and dark, eh?"
The worst part of it all is that I get sucked into it, too. It's probably got something to do with my propensity for bitching about the weather.
But gawsh, it's dark!
Mother Nature, I have two choices for you: either bring summer back, or bring on Christmas so I can start drinking Glühwein at the Weihnachtsmarkt with the Mädels!
Thank you.
13 October 2012
Homeless, A Miniseries: Heimat Edition
So, I was walking the pup yesterday when I got to thinking about how the weather sucks here (hey, it's fall), but that those suckers "back home" already have had a snowstorm.
See, the whole "back home" thing is embedded in an expat's vocabulary, and I'm sure some expats really do think of the place they came from as "home", possibly with the desire to go back there some day.
Try as I might, I've been trying to reprogram my internal monologue to say "Canada" or "Alberta", but it's not entirely easy, and I catch myself slipping up pretty much all the time.
The reason I try so hard to avoid saying "back home" (even in my head), is that I don't really feel like Sleepy Suburb is my home anymore. It was a place, to mostly everyone's chagrin, that I would loudly talk about leaving one day, never to return. I never really liked living there in the first place, never really fitting in. Still, Sleepy Suburb is where I grew up, and there's still a pull inside me that says "This is where you're from". That being said, it's not my home, and I don't like to think of it as such. It's not where I long to go back to, and I don't get any sort of belonging feeling from being there or thinking about being there.
Aside from the presence of Tim Horton's, my family and bestie, going back to Canada on vacation also isn't "going home" per se. I'd be just as happy if those things were in the States, Mexico or China.
What I'm trying to say is that the place holds no meaning for me anymore. (Emphasis on anymore... I'll get to that sometime.)
That being said, I still don't feel "at home" where I live right now. Sure, I live here, but it's not my home, coming with all the warm feelings generated by that word.
It creates awkward conversations when Krauts ask me where I'm from, and act totally surprised when they find out I'm not dying to go back, and I don't really have any plans to go home. Ever. And then to try to explain to these Heimat-lovers that I doubt if I even have a Heimat? Does. Not. Compute.
Anyhoo, I started this blog in an attempt to come to terms with what it means to be an expatriate, and to hopefully share that information with people either from "back home" (see, there it is again!) or those who are experiencing something similar. Now, I mostly write about the weather and jerk Krauts, which I suppose is part of the whole expat-experience on a daily grind sort of level. With this mini-series, I'm going to try to look at the big picture and figure out for myself -- with all of you watching me do it -- why I feel homeless in the first place.
Some things I hope to consider in the coming weeks include:
If you're normally stopping by to read my stories about jerk Krauts and not mind-numbingly dull soul searching, have no fear. There will be plenty of that woven through. I could never give that up!
See, the whole "back home" thing is embedded in an expat's vocabulary, and I'm sure some expats really do think of the place they came from as "home", possibly with the desire to go back there some day.
Try as I might, I've been trying to reprogram my internal monologue to say "Canada" or "Alberta", but it's not entirely easy, and I catch myself slipping up pretty much all the time.
The reason I try so hard to avoid saying "back home" (even in my head), is that I don't really feel like Sleepy Suburb is my home anymore. It was a place, to mostly everyone's chagrin, that I would loudly talk about leaving one day, never to return. I never really liked living there in the first place, never really fitting in. Still, Sleepy Suburb is where I grew up, and there's still a pull inside me that says "This is where you're from". That being said, it's not my home, and I don't like to think of it as such. It's not where I long to go back to, and I don't get any sort of belonging feeling from being there or thinking about being there.
Aside from the presence of Tim Horton's, my family and bestie, going back to Canada on vacation also isn't "going home" per se. I'd be just as happy if those things were in the States, Mexico or China.
What I'm trying to say is that the place holds no meaning for me anymore. (Emphasis on anymore... I'll get to that sometime.)
That being said, I still don't feel "at home" where I live right now. Sure, I live here, but it's not my home, coming with all the warm feelings generated by that word.
It creates awkward conversations when Krauts ask me where I'm from, and act totally surprised when they find out I'm not dying to go back, and I don't really have any plans to go home. Ever. And then to try to explain to these Heimat-lovers that I doubt if I even have a Heimat? Does. Not. Compute.
Anyhoo, I started this blog in an attempt to come to terms with what it means to be an expatriate, and to hopefully share that information with people either from "back home" (see, there it is again!) or those who are experiencing something similar. Now, I mostly write about the weather and jerk Krauts, which I suppose is part of the whole expat-experience on a daily grind sort of level. With this mini-series, I'm going to try to look at the big picture and figure out for myself -- with all of you watching me do it -- why I feel homeless in the first place.
Some things I hope to consider in the coming weeks include:
- How much control do I have over choosing a home, and how much does a home choose me?
- How have some of the places I've lived and called home affected my notion of Heimat?
- How does my hybridity (à la Homi Bhabha) and fact I moved abroad in my early twenties affect me in my search for Heimat?
- Can I have a Heimat? And even more importantly, do I want one?
If you're normally stopping by to read my stories about jerk Krauts and not mind-numbingly dull soul searching, have no fear. There will be plenty of that woven through. I could never give that up!
10 October 2012
My Ears Hurt
Every so often, I have the chance to channel my inner housewife again despite the fact I'm no longer anything like that.
Despite the fact I am now a busy bee in the public sphere and have less time to make my cuddle-atmosphere in the private one, I still like home-y sorts of things.
Except vacuuming.
I've always hated it. It's loud, hurts my ears, and I hate dragging a freeking canister around my flat, plugging and unplugging as I go.
In order to avoid my life-long hatred of vacuuming, I got a Roomba when I lived in Canada. I was quite happy about the fact I could turn it on while I took Maxie for a walk in the morning, thus killing two birds with one stone. No vacuuming on my part, and no Maxie howling at the vacuum cleaner. I tried to take the fact Roomba would always end up locking himself in my bathroom with a grain of salt.
Seeing that Roombas are much too expensive for a student budget in Germany (and why in the world would I tote along a transformer to charge my Canadian one here?), I had to get something new.
So, I got myself what seemed like a decent vacuum: the Ergorapido. Now, it may seem like the perfect thing ever. It's lightweight, has no bag (hate emptying them almost as much as I hate trying to remember to buy them) and no cord, which theoretically meant I would finally enjoy cleaning my floors. It also had excellent reviews and a good rating from the Stiftung Warentest.
I mean, in theory it wasn't bad. It was lightweight and easy to clean, but the whole "mit perfeckter Staubaufnahme" (read: perfect at collecting dust for the non-Krauts of you) is an f-ing joke. Ignoring the fact -- for just one second -- it wouldn't pick up dust or dog hair from my parquet floors, imagine my disgust at trying to vacuum carpets with that thing.
A friend who looked after Max earlier on this year even expressed her disdain at the fact you had to go over the same spot about a gazillion times to get it halfway clean, which kinda "defeats the point".
Agreed.
Needless to say, I tried -- and failed -- multiple times in the last two months to vacuum with that piece of garbage, and finally gave up. I couldn't even stand my flat anymore.
So, I went to Real to get a new vacuum. It's a Dirt Devil, half the price of the Ergo, and sounds like a plane about to take off. It also has crappy ratings for having a difficult filter to clean.
BUT it cleaned my floors.
I probably will try to avoid vacuuming with a vengeance as has been my style for the past twenty-odd years, but at least the dog hair is finally out of the carpet.
Okay, I'm off. Time to start my non-housewife-y day now.
Despite the fact I am now a busy bee in the public sphere and have less time to make my cuddle-atmosphere in the private one, I still like home-y sorts of things.
Except vacuuming.
I've always hated it. It's loud, hurts my ears, and I hate dragging a freeking canister around my flat, plugging and unplugging as I go.
In order to avoid my life-long hatred of vacuuming, I got a Roomba when I lived in Canada. I was quite happy about the fact I could turn it on while I took Maxie for a walk in the morning, thus killing two birds with one stone. No vacuuming on my part, and no Maxie howling at the vacuum cleaner. I tried to take the fact Roomba would always end up locking himself in my bathroom with a grain of salt.
Seeing that Roombas are much too expensive for a student budget in Germany (and why in the world would I tote along a transformer to charge my Canadian one here?), I had to get something new.
So, I got myself what seemed like a decent vacuum: the Ergorapido. Now, it may seem like the perfect thing ever. It's lightweight, has no bag (hate emptying them almost as much as I hate trying to remember to buy them) and no cord, which theoretically meant I would finally enjoy cleaning my floors. It also had excellent reviews and a good rating from the Stiftung Warentest.
I mean, in theory it wasn't bad. It was lightweight and easy to clean, but the whole "mit perfeckter Staubaufnahme" (read: perfect at collecting dust for the non-Krauts of you) is an f-ing joke. Ignoring the fact -- for just one second -- it wouldn't pick up dust or dog hair from my parquet floors, imagine my disgust at trying to vacuum carpets with that thing.
A friend who looked after Max earlier on this year even expressed her disdain at the fact you had to go over the same spot about a gazillion times to get it halfway clean, which kinda "defeats the point".
Agreed.
Needless to say, I tried -- and failed -- multiple times in the last two months to vacuum with that piece of garbage, and finally gave up. I couldn't even stand my flat anymore.
So, I went to Real to get a new vacuum. It's a Dirt Devil, half the price of the Ergo, and sounds like a plane about to take off. It also has crappy ratings for having a difficult filter to clean.
BUT it cleaned my floors.
I probably will try to avoid vacuuming with a vengeance as has been my style for the past twenty-odd years, but at least the dog hair is finally out of the carpet.
Okay, I'm off. Time to start my non-housewife-y day now.
09 October 2012
I feel OLD.
So, being back in Allgäu last week, I took plentiful advantage of one of my favourite Allgäu pastimes.
Hiking up Grünten, you ask?
No, of course not!
I was playing copious amounts of MarioKart on Wii, silly!
There's something you should know about me and video games -- I don't play a lot of them. I think it has something to do with the fact I hate losing. It's not just a matter of disliking being the loser. No, it goes so much further than that.
Take, for example, family game nights at my childhood home. There I was, Sunday evening after Sunday evening, storming off in a fit of rage after playing Uno-Rummy Up and losing to my sister.
Screaming, tears, red-faced frustration, the whole bit.
Naturally, my dislike for losing extended (and still extends) to video games. I was never a fan of games like Zelda, Super Mario Bros., or anything that required trying to beat some sort of boss. As a kid, I was much more of a SimCity 2000 kind of girl, especially with all the cheats in hand that I could find. (This, of course, ended up extending to The Sims, where I would live out magical fantasies for my Sims who didn't have to work since I graciously gave them one million Simoleans to live off of.) I also liked playing Donkey Kong's 1-3, but only the first couple of levels that I'd mastered. By the time I'd hit Mine Cart Carnage, I was a goner.
Anyhoo, back in the days of SuperNES (yeah, remember that?), I was a big fan of MarioKart. I always lost anyway, but for some reason it didn't bother me in that game. I was always jealous of friends who had the game on N64 when it came out, because I was not only still playing on SuperNES, but since my parents hadn't bought the game for me and my sister, we were still renting it whenever we could at the video store.
So, MarioKart has always been my favourite video game excepting the whole Sim-bit. So I love playing it when I go to Allgäu. Especially on the internet with those losers who are still playing it after umpteen years and have about 9000 points to their Mii's name. Losing (possibly partially because I still insist on playing Peach, though I've recently been testing out Toadette) still doesn't really faze me, and I've started to accept Rainbow Road as a beautiful thing rather than the subject of my (Mii's) demise.
But, yeah... My point about being old. On one particularly drunken evening, we decided to pull out N64 for a go on MarioKart.
WTF.
How in the world did we (as humans) play with graphics like that?! How in the world was this some sort of awesome step-up that was state-of-the-art in comparison to SuperNES ?!
As if Peach's "here we gooooo" wasn't enough to drive one silly, the graphics are ridiculous. In the back of my tipsy mind, I thought that there could perhaps be a problem with my vision, and the game was just as amazing as it was in my pre-teen memory. So, I tried again the next day in a more sober state of mind.
Alas, the graphics are just crap.
(In Nintendo's defence, it was 1996, after all. You know... Like before Titanic even came out the first time in theatres?)
Then I started thinking about other technologies I grew up with.
Seeing the graphics on N64 made this rather clear to me, believe it or not. Otherwise, I've just been living in some sort of technology bubble without thinking how this all happened.
Anyhoo, not really any point to this all, except that I feel like a technology dinosaur. Also, I am torn between wanting to stick with MarioKart on Wii or better for the rest of my life and trying to get hold of a SuperNES copy to see how bad it really was.
Hiking up Grünten, you ask?
No, of course not!
I was playing copious amounts of MarioKart on Wii, silly!
There's something you should know about me and video games -- I don't play a lot of them. I think it has something to do with the fact I hate losing. It's not just a matter of disliking being the loser. No, it goes so much further than that.
Take, for example, family game nights at my childhood home. There I was, Sunday evening after Sunday evening, storming off in a fit of rage after playing Uno-Rummy Up and losing to my sister.
Screaming, tears, red-faced frustration, the whole bit.
Naturally, my dislike for losing extended (and still extends) to video games. I was never a fan of games like Zelda, Super Mario Bros., or anything that required trying to beat some sort of boss. As a kid, I was much more of a SimCity 2000 kind of girl, especially with all the cheats in hand that I could find. (This, of course, ended up extending to The Sims, where I would live out magical fantasies for my Sims who didn't have to work since I graciously gave them one million Simoleans to live off of.) I also liked playing Donkey Kong's 1-3, but only the first couple of levels that I'd mastered. By the time I'd hit Mine Cart Carnage, I was a goner.
Anyhoo, back in the days of SuperNES (yeah, remember that?), I was a big fan of MarioKart. I always lost anyway, but for some reason it didn't bother me in that game. I was always jealous of friends who had the game on N64 when it came out, because I was not only still playing on SuperNES, but since my parents hadn't bought the game for me and my sister, we were still renting it whenever we could at the video store.
So, MarioKart has always been my favourite video game excepting the whole Sim-bit. So I love playing it when I go to Allgäu. Especially on the internet with those losers who are still playing it after umpteen years and have about 9000 points to their Mii's name. Losing (possibly partially because I still insist on playing Peach, though I've recently been testing out Toadette) still doesn't really faze me, and I've started to accept Rainbow Road as a beautiful thing rather than the subject of my (Mii's) demise.
But, yeah... My point about being old. On one particularly drunken evening, we decided to pull out N64 for a go on MarioKart.
WTF.
How in the world did we (as humans) play with graphics like that?! How in the world was this some sort of awesome step-up that was state-of-the-art in comparison to SuperNES ?!
As if Peach's "here we gooooo" wasn't enough to drive one silly, the graphics are ridiculous. In the back of my tipsy mind, I thought that there could perhaps be a problem with my vision, and the game was just as amazing as it was in my pre-teen memory. So, I tried again the next day in a more sober state of mind.
Alas, the graphics are just crap.
(In Nintendo's defence, it was 1996, after all. You know... Like before Titanic even came out the first time in theatres?)
Then I started thinking about other technologies I grew up with.
- I learned DOS to operate my family's first computer.
- The best thing about WordPerfect was getting to print out things on that paper you had to tear the sides off of.
- S., T. and I used to sit on dial-up forever so we could go in the official Hanson chat room. (Don't you judge! I hear you judging!)
- We used to play The Oregon Trail at school and save our progress from Number Munchers on a floppy.
- I used to love playing Dr. Mario on NES. Yeah. NES.
- We were using ICQ loooong before MSN even came along.
- My first laptop was bigger than most PCs, and definitely just as heavy.
- Back in high school, we used Nexopia and not Facebook. (Well, actually we used Enternexus. And who knew that the site was Canadian? Ahhh, maybe that had something to do with it?)
- And the list goes on...
Seeing the graphics on N64 made this rather clear to me, believe it or not. Otherwise, I've just been living in some sort of technology bubble without thinking how this all happened.
Anyhoo, not really any point to this all, except that I feel like a technology dinosaur. Also, I am torn between wanting to stick with MarioKart on Wii or better for the rest of my life and trying to get hold of a SuperNES copy to see how bad it really was.
05 October 2012
What does your mail say about you?
Okay, wacky topic, but maybe I'm disillusioned (or paranoid) enough after seeing my fair share of postal workers deliver my mail to my door in person (usually in combination with a package). Rifle through the different pieces of mail, raise eyebrows, and hand the mail to me with a smirk.
I'm probably just paranoid. The response probably has less to do with my mail and more with the fact I usually answer the door in my pyjamas and have a howling dog on the other side of the door who happens to hate doorbells more than anything else in the world.
I mean, it's obvious that anyone's browsing history would give away some embarrassing secrets about habits and interests. (I, for one, have been recently recommended to watch "flying dachshunds" on YouTube, FWIW.)
I guess my mail, though, would probably give a fair look into my life, albeit excepting the hints to my ridiculous YouTube watching habits.
So, I invite you to sort through my mail with me! Yay!
So, there you have it. I'm a bilingual foreigner from Canada studying History in Germany who happens to be a socialist and a feminist. I also do my best to pay my bills. It can also be assumed I do so, since I haven't included bill collectors in my mail-list. All this information is open to the random who delivers my mail.
It seems the only thing my mailman doesn't know about me is that I watch ridiculous dachshund videos on YouTube. Or watch the Season 6 promo of Gossip Girl OVER AND OVER. T-minus three days, yoop!
I'm probably just paranoid. The response probably has less to do with my mail and more with the fact I usually answer the door in my pyjamas and have a howling dog on the other side of the door who happens to hate doorbells more than anything else in the world.
I mean, it's obvious that anyone's browsing history would give away some embarrassing secrets about habits and interests. (I, for one, have been recently recommended to watch "flying dachshunds" on YouTube, FWIW.)
I guess my mail, though, would probably give a fair look into my life, albeit excepting the hints to my ridiculous YouTube watching habits.
So, I invite you to sort through my mail with me! Yay!
- Bank statements: I apparently do not keep my money hidden under my mattress.
- Letters from the Canadian Government: Ausländerin.
- Der Spiegel: I am an Ausländerin who can read German at a fairly reasonable level. (Note the lack of a Deutsch Perfekt abo in my mailbox.)
- Lotta and Clara: I'm a socialist, and most likely a feminist, to boot. (*oh the horror!!*)
- The American Historical Review: I am a historian (or trying to be). I am also apparently bilingual since I can read academic texts in English and the Spiegel in German. Since I'm also a Canuck, the jury's out on joual, but I guess you all know the real answer to that one.
- Paperwork from my local Stadtwerke: I either subscribe to electricity or gas, which means I probably don't live in the dark. (You may think this is trivial, but you try living by candlelight!)
- Paperwork from Uni Köln: STUDENT ALERT! I must really be struggling to pay my energy bills! Still, combining this paperwork with my AHR subscription, chances are good I study history.
- And, of course, various other bills that point to my student status.
So, there you have it. I'm a bilingual foreigner from Canada studying History in Germany who happens to be a socialist and a feminist. I also do my best to pay my bills. It can also be assumed I do so, since I haven't included bill collectors in my mail-list. All this information is open to the random who delivers my mail.
It seems the only thing my mailman doesn't know about me is that I watch ridiculous dachshund videos on YouTube. Or watch the Season 6 promo of Gossip Girl OVER AND OVER. T-minus three days, yoop!
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