Two years in a row, we have had the brilliant idea of having a pinata at our daughter's birthday party. Living in Germany, we thought it would be a treat for the kids to have such an experience (though neither I nor my wife is Mexican or Latin American or likes Tequila)
Last year, for our daughter's fifth birthday, my wife schlepped a pinata across the Atlantic from Texas. Needless to say, it did not break.
This year, we ordered one online (who knew one could order a pinata online in Germany) and again, the kids whacked at it for a good 30 minutes without it even showing a hit of a crack..
I hope the german kids aren't getting the wrong idea about a pinata, that it is something to hit and hit till nothing happens and an adult hs to pry it open to let the candy out.
Showing posts with label general. Show all posts
Showing posts with label general. Show all posts
Monday, July 11, 2011
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/business/30know.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
I found this article especially profound, having been away from my engineering job for a few weeks and working on things that have very little to do with engineering. The time away has given me a new perspective on some of the things that have perplexed me over the past year.
I'm surrounded by engineers by education, brilliant ones at that, but conversations are about more or less the same thing and they tend to flow in one direction. Fresh perspectives are tough to come by and even tougher to gain a foot hold if someone has one.
I found this article especially profound, having been away from my engineering job for a few weeks and working on things that have very little to do with engineering. The time away has given me a new perspective on some of the things that have perplexed me over the past year.
I'm surrounded by engineers by education, brilliant ones at that, but conversations are about more or less the same thing and they tend to flow in one direction. Fresh perspectives are tough to come by and even tougher to gain a foot hold if someone has one.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
The joys of the German workplace
My experience of working in Germany is limited to one company and its not even a German company. From what I have heard from friends and acqaintances, my experience may not even be representative of the typical German workplace. But it is not atypical and goes a long way to show why I love working and living in Deutschland.
If you open the door to the cupboard in my office, here's what you'll find inside:
And here's what the bottom drawer of my desk looks like
Here are two pictures of my office, one of my closet with a case of beer in it and the next of my bottom drawer stuffed with empty bottles of beer.
Not that this is the norm within the company. Except for one other collegue (who also happens to be American), no one else has beer in their office. But the fact that I have beer bottles in my office is not something that I have to hide. Its completely allowed and accepted.
Its so allowed that the Coke machine in the basement of our office building
actually dispenses beer (Meckatzer is a beer from a brewery in Mekatz, a town nearby)
The tradition at our company at least is that every employee that joins or leaves the company must throw an Einstand (for joining) or Austand (when leaving) Austands generally involve a lot of drinking on company premises, which generally start during work hours. So in effect, the company pays us to drink on the job.
There's plenty of other things as well about the German workplace: Six weeks of holidays per year (but that's not so much if you count the vacation we're forced to take), we're only allowed to work ten hours a day (anything more is not counted towards overtime which I'll get to and if you get in an accident on your way home after working more than ten hours, the company is liable), and the best part: The company keeps track of the hours over eight that are worked. It can be taken as vacation or be paid out. As vacation, this can accrue quite quickly and lead to a lot of extra time off.
The other pluses of living here: One of the German responses to the oil crisis in the 70s was to build a lot of bike paths to make it easier for people to use bicycles to get around. For about seven months out of the year, I'm able to ride my bike in to work. Its a bit more than 10 km each way and that saves me a whole lot of car usage, not to mention getting a good bit of exercise every day. The weather is often bad though and it can get cold. So biking regularly does require some perseverence but its fun.
Are there only pluses? No there are minuses as well but for me, the pluses outweigh the minuses. The minuses: Tax rate is a bit high, especially if you have no kids. I'm paying a lot of money in social security and health insurance whose benefits I'm nost sure I'll ever get to enjoy. The country is aging and it can be seen in its acceptance and use of technology (a field in which I work)
If you open the door to the cupboard in my office, here's what you'll find inside:
And here's what the bottom drawer of my desk looks like
Here are two pictures of my office, one of my closet with a case of beer in it and the next of my bottom drawer stuffed with empty bottles of beer.
Not that this is the norm within the company. Except for one other collegue (who also happens to be American), no one else has beer in their office. But the fact that I have beer bottles in my office is not something that I have to hide. Its completely allowed and accepted.
Its so allowed that the Coke machine in the basement of our office building
actually dispenses beer (Meckatzer is a beer from a brewery in Mekatz, a town nearby)
The tradition at our company at least is that every employee that joins or leaves the company must throw an Einstand (for joining) or Austand (when leaving) Austands generally involve a lot of drinking on company premises, which generally start during work hours. So in effect, the company pays us to drink on the job.
There's plenty of other things as well about the German workplace: Six weeks of holidays per year (but that's not so much if you count the vacation we're forced to take), we're only allowed to work ten hours a day (anything more is not counted towards overtime which I'll get to and if you get in an accident on your way home after working more than ten hours, the company is liable), and the best part: The company keeps track of the hours over eight that are worked. It can be taken as vacation or be paid out. As vacation, this can accrue quite quickly and lead to a lot of extra time off.
The other pluses of living here: One of the German responses to the oil crisis in the 70s was to build a lot of bike paths to make it easier for people to use bicycles to get around. For about seven months out of the year, I'm able to ride my bike in to work. Its a bit more than 10 km each way and that saves me a whole lot of car usage, not to mention getting a good bit of exercise every day. The weather is often bad though and it can get cold. So biking regularly does require some perseverence but its fun.
Are there only pluses? No there are minuses as well but for me, the pluses outweigh the minuses. The minuses: Tax rate is a bit high, especially if you have no kids. I'm paying a lot of money in social security and health insurance whose benefits I'm nost sure I'll ever get to enjoy. The country is aging and it can be seen in its acceptance and use of technology (a field in which I work)
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Wireless market in Iraq
An article in this month's Spectrum magazine about the wireless market in Baghdad (http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar06/3071/1) states that "many middle class Iraqis are paying an astounding 25% - 50% of their income for cell phones." And this for a phone with which you can't roam into or call anyone in a competing wireless network.
Putting that into perspective, that would mean in Germany (where I currently live), a person would be willing to pay between $335 and $770 per month for a mobile. That's on par with what someone would pay for rent. In Iraq, for some people, having a mobile is as important as having a roof over your head.
Anybody still questioning the transformative power of wireless telephony need only look at that statistic. I think its difficult to judge the effect of mobile telephony in first world societies as other competing technologies are just as easily (and perhaps more cheaply) available but its in the midst of chaos that mobile telephony really shines. The (relatively) minimal infrastructure required, the ubiquitous availability of the service. Its easy to see how its transforms the functioning of societies
Putting that into perspective, that would mean in Germany (where I currently live), a person would be willing to pay between $335 and $770 per month for a mobile. That's on par with what someone would pay for rent. In Iraq, for some people, having a mobile is as important as having a roof over your head.
Anybody still questioning the transformative power of wireless telephony need only look at that statistic. I think its difficult to judge the effect of mobile telephony in first world societies as other competing technologies are just as easily (and perhaps more cheaply) available but its in the midst of chaos that mobile telephony really shines. The (relatively) minimal infrastructure required, the ubiquitous availability of the service. Its easy to see how its transforms the functioning of societies
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