Yearly Archive for 2008

Page 2 of 7

Lone Caucasian

Published on 25. October 2008 in life. 0 Comments

I started my German course on Wednesday and I’ve not felt so alone like I do now in some time…………….there is only silence everywhere (I guess cause no-one in the class can speak German at all) and everyone is all too busy hearing their particular brand of silence than to hear anyone else’s concerns. That’s ok, it’s rather German in fact, the good ole’ we don’t listen but we care, if what we do doesn’t agree with you rest assured it is most definitely for the betterment of all mankind attitude………..hmmmm lovely.

Anyway, course is pretty easy at the moment although I can see that pretty soon it’s going to get a bit difficult. I may as well enjoy the easy stuff while I can. I must say, there are a few people in the class that are complete fucking tards. I find it hard to believe that they’ll ever learn this damn language, some possibly never will!! haha

Silence is deafening.

Change of Pace

Published on 6. October 2008 in life. 1 Comment

Well, last week on Tuesday was my last day with Strato as I had decided not to extend my contract any further. I made this decision because frankly my German still sucks and I’m never going to get ahead if it just stays at this level, I would really prefer having a job that relied a bit more on my qualifications and the only way I can achieve that is if I speak German relatively fluently rather than the broken way in which I speak it now.

So…..a bit daunting but there you go. We’re going to be a bit poorer for a while :( but we’ll manage somehow. I’m trying to book myself in to a course that is payed for by the government and provided by a lot of private language schools here called “Integrations Kurs”. It goes for 7 months and at the end you receive a certificate that says you can study in German universities, so I’m figuring I must finish up at a good level by then.

The major headache at the moment, as usual, is all the paperwork required. It’s probably pretty difficult for anyone to imagine just how tied up in bureaucracy this country is, before I’d moved here I’d always heard of Germany being somewhat bureaucratic but seriously, I had no idea.

Essentially I require copies of just about everything you can imagine as well as a bunch of forms from various departments, none of which communicate with each other or whose databases are linked in any way, and all of which firstly must approve whether I can do the course or not. One of the major problems is the time spent going from department to department………..no, they are not in the same building or even the same suburb for that matter! Even though I am a EU citizen I still require a piece of paper that states I am able to stay in the country (bit late now since I’ve already been living and working here for 2 1/2 years) and the department that I get that one from is on strike at the moment.

This has kinda fucked things up for me really because I wanted to lodge all my forms to the final department that approves the course on Tuesday (tommorrow) but now I won’t be able to. This final department requires about 14 days to process these forms and the course I wanted to take starts on the 27th so without this final piece of paper I can’t lodge my forms and will most likely miss out on starting the course on this date.

Well, not sure if anyone reading this will be able to make any sense of it, but there you go. I am stuck in the mud and it’s all the governments fault!!!

Crystal Castles

Published on 25. September 2008 in sound of berlin. 0 Comments

So, a couple of friends and Ina and I went to see Crystal Castles at Club Maria the other night (Wed). We were quite hyped to see them, well I was Ina wasn’t so much, but unfortunately they weren’t anywhere near as good as I had hoped.

Now before you start slagging me off and saying things like “but it’s hard to do a live show when you’re an electronic act!” let me just say that after my 14 odd years of clubbing with bits of DJing/Promoting thrown in I’ve seen my fair share of live acts and this one was definitely below par. Pity really cause I really like their music but there you go, not all acts can do it great live. She was just screaming into the microphone making my ears bleed whilst he was stuck behind his little desk/portable rack box controlling what was most likely a CD player as I didn’t see a computer in sight. I could have forgiven him somewhat if there was a notebook as he could have been using Ableton but the way all the tracks were tied in along with the absence of a notebook I can only presume a CD mix was used with perhaps some adlib synth use thrown in.

There you go, my brief review…………have a listen to what they do if you like, regardless of the live show they still make some great tracks.

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