Today, exactly one year ago, our beloved Maria had her
crisis. Four days later, on 7th November, she would leave us forever
It is one year since she left us, and many things happened
to us during this time. Trying to find a horizon and a routine again, we had to
live important moments without her. Birthdays, holidays, the first day at
school and many other ocassions she was missed. We miss her every single
minute.
We had to build us a new life. Thanks to mama, Maria and her
teachings, we learned many ways on how to live our life and how to do that at
our new home. A home she gave to us with a lot of love and she was only able to
enjoy for a very short time. We learned the concept of home from her and we
will live as she would had liked us to live this experience.
We had so many encounters and received so much support from
friends. The last year, thanks to you, to the family and everyone we encountered
on our way, we could a find again a new kind of "normality". A
normality that should not be and is not normal at all, but one in which we
expect a lot from the future and learn from the present, and that is living all
about: learning and looking forward.
I want to believe, that we are standing again on our feet.
You were an important part in the process of recovery. Something is clear,
Mama, Maria will be always missed and the pain that her absence brings will
always be present. But one learns how to live with it. It is an indispensable
part of our history, a life chapter, that sooner or later and under other
circumstances, everyone has to live.
We look forward and we are grateful for all friends we made
on the way. Also for the friends of Mama that are now our friends
Even if we cannot see us, we know that you from time to time
think of us and Maria just as we think of you. And we know that the time will
come for us to meet again.
P – Someday
we must die my son, but you know what? One of the reasons why people have
children is to live longer, even if we are not anymore there. We continue
living in our children. You, my little, have
my blood and my genes, and thanks to you I will exist long and I will always be
by your side, even if I am not around anymore.
M – Then, do
you want to be buried in a coffin or in a jar.
P -I think I don’t kno…
M – I mean…
do you want to be eaten by worms? Or be burned?
Today I
read an article1 about supporting young mothers
working in science, by letting them bringing their babies and kids to scientific
conferences. While this idea very
superfluously seems to support mothers in science; it can only strengthen an
already marked sexism debilitating women in their field of work.
Part of "Father
and son"- Story of the Ilustrator. Erich Ohsers (E.O. Plauen) 2
And here I
explain why.
As a father
working in science, married to a scientist, and both attending regularly to scientific
conferences; I would personally not have a problem seeing mothers
breast-feeding their babies or kids running through poster (but not Conference)
sessions. However, I doubt that any parent would be fully able to concentrate
on networking, giving a presentation or trying to get the most of such a
meeting while the own child needs to be fed or simply needs some attention.
It will almost
certainly be boring enough for any child, as for the most of the adult
population, to hear for hours how protein “X” interact with peptide “Y” and
what the p value was for that control group that no one really understands.
The whole idea
seems to support mothers, but what it indeed does is to openly support sexism by
assuming that mothers alone should take care of their children, even at work;
leaving fathers behind or undisturbed at their workplaces.
The easiest
solutions to consider are:
1. Fathers
to take responsibility of their children specially while mamas have to work and
no other childcare option is available.
2. Although
difficult to conciliate in all countries, easier childcare options at the
working place, and conferences in this case, calls for an intrinsic change of
national policies in some countries that should favor mothers (and families)
working not only in science but in any other job.
An insider
tip, there are countries that support paid maternal/paternal leave and grant
easy childcare options.
There was only
one person that could probably be the closest to understand the complexity of
the universe and therefore of existence. The same person likely lived every day
of his life like if it was the very last one, as it should be.
Diagnosed
with a condition that would not let him live more than a couple of years longer,
he managed to survive more than 50 years with this disease, time in which he
left a path of knowledge that could only be compared with that left by Isaac Newton.
Stephen
Hawking might leave this world but he will be perpetuated as long as the human
race exists. Not for long if his forecast turns to be also true.
Activity
tracker systems are proposed to monitor physical activity during the day and
the night. However, they might fail to retrieve specific information tailored
for each user, especially from those that are still reluctant to use smart
phones.
A classical,
battery free, Old School activity Tracker system (OST) was
evaluated for the period of one year from January to December 2017.
Daily sport
activities performed by a motivated 37-year old male subject were manually documented
after training through a keyboard into a database created in a 7-year old
computer.
Daily
training sessions were classified into 6 categories: 1) Legs, 2) Core (back, abdominals),
3) Arms/back contractions, 4) Arms/chest flexions, 5) whole body training, 6)
others (including swimming, running, biking, etc).
A database
with 137 exercises for the different categories was created based on personal
experience and the recommendations of Marc Lauren (1). This database helped to
spontaneously decide what to exercise every day.
An average
of 16 exercises per week were performed uninterrupted in the year 2017, where
the weeks with lowest performance were due to A) sickness B) relaxing days in a
Spa, C) a summer family trip, D) laziness or E) the Christmas break; as shown in
figure 1.
Number of exercises
performed every week in 2017 classified by category.
Figure 1. A, B,
C, D, E arrows point weeks where the normal training was interrupted. The Old
School Activity Tracker OST was able to identify these periods
A total of 860
exercises were performed throughout the year. The in-house training period significantly
improved performance on different physical challenges.
Attempt to break the world record of abdominal plank
New year resolution: The planche pushup
(9 monthfollow up, 7 attempts)
Of note, a considerable
reduction in running activities compared to previous years was observed (285
minutes in 2017 vs approx. 2400 minutes per month from 1996 to 2003),
The
correlation found between weeks with low activity (A to E, figure 1) and the
periods of training restriction due to external or motivational reasons,
validate OST as a strategy to
monitor and evaluate physical performance.
These
results revive and expose the potential benefits of writing down training achievements
independently of invasive electronic devices such as smartphone-dependent
activity trackers.
Material and methods
A bar fixed
on a concrete wall, a very small child (4-8 Kg), a medium size child (9 to 14
Kg), a sponge mat and an ab wheel were spontaneously used depending on the mood
of the operator. Statistical analysis was performed using Excel software
(Microsoft Office). The majority of the exercises where performed according to
Marc Lauren recommendation for each training category as shown in
representative examples below.
This weekend there will be elections in
Austria to elect the chancellor. As in any other country, it won’t be easy to choose
who will be representing the country internationally and have direct influence
on our pockets. I can only give a neutral opinion without having the right and obligation
to vote in the country where my sons were born.
An introduction to the candidates:
The reds from the socialist party (SPÖ) are
represented by the current chancellor Christian
Kern, who was not democratically elected but because of his contacts with
the red party. The ex administrator of the Austrian Railways ÖBB was recruited
by the red party in order to replace the resigning chancellor Werner Faymann,
who stepped out when he was no longer
able to deal with the coalition partner. After a vacation, he restarted his
career in a high position at the UN in parallel to his personal business.
It is likely the previous experience as
manager from a state company that is able to internationally compete with others
that gives C. Kern some points in favour. With this experience he pursues a
very socialist ideal, as its party requires him to do, to please the financial
needs of the working class of his
country.This is an asset his opponents might lack.
Sebastian Kurz, commands the turquoise party ÖVP. Since his arrival
to the party he turned all upside down including the traditional black color of
the party. He obtained unconditional support since the ÖVP had no other
candidate to fill the boots of his also resigning vice-chancellor and party leader
Reinhold Mitterlehner, who not being able to work together with the red party,
decided to continue his career outside of politics (Seems to be difficult to
work together as politician in Austria, there is little persevereance and big opposition).
Sebastian Kurz, being the stereotype of an
ideal leader: tall, handsome and good speaker; heads the party still named the
“blacks” because the media are still reluctant to refer the party as the “turquoise”.
Unfortunately the propaganda of his party is similar, if not identical, to that
of the right party FPÖ, which main argument for a better Austria is the
reduction of immigration. The very short age of S. Kurz, to my opinion, is a
disadvantage to exercise a job of such an importance (He is 31 years old).
Nevertheless, S. Kurz learned quite well how to communicate (body and spoken
language) to convince the masses and this helped him to position himself in his
current and previous jobs as foreign and integration minister respectively.
Heinz Christian Strache, leads the blue right party FPÖ and as one of its
main goals is to reduce “islamization” in Austria, being other problems, to my
understanding, neglected in his agenda.
As an immigrant and self nominated
“tolerant” I can only reject the presents that his campaign give away in the
streets, although my kids would gladly take them. (photo:
During the presidential elections, the FPÖ
has demonstrated support in towns and small cities where, ironically, multiculturality
is not really observed and the immigration rates are low enough compared to big
cities such as Vienna. This unmasks the unnecessary fear to immigrants and
refugees in some parts of Austria.
The pink Neos are led by Matthias Strolz, from whose campaign I
could mainly notice that he tends to get overly upset and resented the moment
of sustaining a debate with other candidates. His style is likely not ideal for
a chancellor of a republic.
If one wishes to choose a party with
alternative ideas, maybe is the “green party” the one to elect. As its name
indicates, they would of course take care of the environment as one of their
priorities, however, they do not have much acceptation. The main candidate for
the green party, Ulrike Lunacek,
would likely be a good representant of Austria abroad, but she is not as popular
as her party camerade Alexander van der Bellen who won in the last presidential
elections (thanks to his election in the big cities, see previous figure).
This Sunday I can only impatiently wait to
see the results and afterwards reproach or congratulate friends and colleages
that were born in this colorful country. One thing is for sure, this election
can’t be as bad as that in an english speaking country on the other side of the
atlantic ocean. Reference from pictures:
In the last
two months I was able to learn with my eldest kid (4) about the universe,
planets and dinosaurs; main subjects in his daily conversation. Reading his
books and visiting (many times) museums I recalled what we all already know but
not think deeply about its meaning: how old is our universe, why dinos died and
what are we doing here.
We learned
that the universe is 13.7 billion years old. To put it in numbers 13.700.000.000
years and that it all started with a big KaBoom! (Big Bang). Since then a lot has
happened to put humans where we are now. What is interesting is that we are
definitely new in the history of the universe and we still think however that
we are central to it. Worsely, we defend blindly (even with our own lives) our
selfish mythological beliefs about who created all things.
Why I say that
we are the “new ones” here? Let’s pretend that the universe has exactly 100
years old, just like a healthy and attractive centenerian that seems will live
much longer.
At the age
of 1 year (200 million years after the Big Bang) galaxies developed, but it is only
at the age of 67 that the planet earth was formed (9150 million years after the
Big Bang). At this stage the planet Earth was still very immature for living
beings.
Multicellular
organisms (Ediacara fauna)on Earth are estimated to have occurred around 13.08
billion years after the great explosion. Translated to our centenerian universe
it means that only at the age of 95 life could arise on at least one of the trillion
planets of our universe, in planet Earth.
Dinosaurs
showed up 235 million years ago (at the age of 98 of our centenerian universe) and
they ruled the Earth for not less than 160 million years (that’s about more
than one day for our 100 year old universe).
The 5th mass extinction of
living beings on planet Earth took place 65 million years ago. Afterwards
humans, as we know them, started to develop from apes (Hominoidea). Miss
Universe is now 99 years and there are only 53 days to go for her 100 birthday.
Homo sapiens (humans) seem to appear 20 hours before the
100th birthday of our centenerian universe (fossils were found in
Morocco dating back to 300 thousand years ago. Link here).
The
chronology of events in the Universe and in our planet is intensively studied, considered
reliable and teached in school and university books. It is constantly updated
and either proved correct by scientific methods or at least by mathematical approximations
to which we don’t want to go much into detail (for more information please
apply to the nearest Paleonthology, Astrophysics and/or Particle Physics course
in your town). However, humans, right from their beginning, believed and still
believe on supernatural and mythological forces that created the universe,
earth and mankind. Each religion (although just few minutes old in the history
of our centenarian universe) had, has and will have its own version of the
origins; and their followers, as in the past, are not willing to accept other
explanation than their own.
To our
fortune, there are people in our planet who are not conformist with fairy tales
and are curious enough to investigate and go deeper into the origin of things.
Without them we would still believe that the Earth is flat, or that it is the
center of the universe, or that humans were created from mud, or dust or corn
or from a male human rib.
It is worrying
that we will almost for sure not be as long in this planet as dinosaurs were
(160 million years). In our very young existence (300 thousand years) there are
estimates pointing to human extinction to year 2600 if there are no changes in our
climate policies and the current exponential population rise 1 .
Based on
these predictions, Stephen Hawking, one of the greatest physicists of our time,
prompt us urgently to seek new worlds and colonize them if we want to avoid extinction
in the near future.
For his whole
lecture at the Starmus Festival 2017 (Norway) see here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpG5P6ugeeI
It’s a
topic with many more questions that we might never be able to respond. For
example:
What about the
time before the Big Bang? Time does not count there?
Maybe is
our universe a part of another one, or one of many. And what would happen when
two expanding universes encounter each other? (Likely total annihilation). In
fact, a “Multiverse” is a possibility that is supported by the M-theorie (which
I have no clue what is but astrophysicists might understand it)
Even if we
don’t dissapear in the next thousand years, we might in few million years with the
upcoming waves of mass extinction (as it happened before 440, 375, 250, 205 and
65 million years ago) or the possibility of a cooling down of the universe or
an explosion of our sun among other astronomical catastrophes. Thinking of these
we should probably aim to make a backup of all the information we generated in the
last 300 thousand years. From “how to do fire” to “how to cook spaghetti”
should be stored for future residents living in this or more likely in other
planets.
Now, if you
excuse me, I need to use my very limited time in this Earth for something else (My
hopefully >80 years are just about
18 seconds time of our 100 year old Miss Universe).
Persistence
of memory, Salvador Dalí 1931
References
1.Hawking,
Stephen. The Universe in a Nutshell. 2001
2.The Museum or Natural History. Vienna,
Austria. http://www.nhm-wien.ac.at/
I know that you got somehow worried about your 4
year old grandchild wanting to go with a skirt to the kindergarten. I believe
there is no reason to be worried about it as you and I were just raised in a
much more conservative environment than where your grandchild is. Maybe I was
skeptical at the beginning when he insisted to wear a skirt and his soccer T-shirt,
but I realized that equality of genders starts at home and even better if it
starts while one is still a child. I am not saying that wearing a skirt is good
or bad for children at this age, when innocence is the overall rule and “sexualism”
is absolutely absent. But we have to understand that in the developed world
there are places wheremale workers voluntarily wear skirts at work (link) just
because they are more comfortable, and this does not necessarily compromise any
sexual preference if this is the reason of your concern.
Train drivers in Sweden. Photo source http://infinitelegroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/sweden-skirt-infinitelegroom-3.png
I do not have to mention that the typical dress
for men in Scotland is a skirt, and I do not think there is a single lady in
this world that will find less attractive or question the sexuality of Sean Connery
if he is to be found walking around in his skirt.
Maybe your grandchild will flush or simply
laugh about when I take his pictures out at his wedding showing him dressed with
his Maya the bee skirt and his soccer T-shirt.
Through the eyes of his parents and those from many
other people, this is just a phase that makes him even more sweet and innocent
than what he already is. Something to respect about him is how he independently
chooses and has the initiative to wear something like that. This power of
choice was not inherited from his father who at this age was always a conformist
and weak-minded when it was about making own-decisions.
How the parents of your grandchild think and
accept this situation comes pretty much hand in hand with a very strong social
movement to achieve equality of genders at all levels. There is increasing awareness
in Europe (and hopefully all over the world) that women should be treated
equally to men. For example, by getting paid for the same job as it is known
that women are underpaid compared to male co-workers. This is unfair as we all
know that in many instances it is women who “wear the trousers” (to put it in
an understandable words that are still discriminatory) at work or home.
In this same line, a paid parental leave at
work after a son or a daughter is born is mainly taken by women, with only few
fathers daring to take this time off to take care of their kids.
From my side, I feel lucky when I am able to play
the role of “housewife” (I did not found a valid equivalent word for the male
counterpart and I find that offending). I do not only enjoy this time but I
also believe that is the correct thing to do after typically mothers (and
grandmothers) have to be fully engaged
taking care of the children, even at the expense of their own careers.
I hope I can thwart somehow this situation at
home with a paid paternal leave that I was allowed to take thanks to the
Austrian system and the good spirit of the company where I work. These two
months are typical for fathers who stay at home but still much less compared to
the invested time of mothers.
I hope I could clarify dear mother your
thoughts and worries by explaining why your 4 year old grandchild and 37 year
old child sometimes choose to wear the apron. Gender equality could be achieved
already at very young or older ages. I also send you a big hug while I still
can before your second grandchild wakes up and demands for his fruits that are
not yet cut.
No one should
ever discuss back that the most important thing in life is to stay healthy,
everything else just doesn’t matter compared to your physical and mental health,
and they should have the highest priority because your entire life depends on
them.
There are
times that one gets sick either with a harmless cold or an undesirable more
serious disease. These are the days that will make you miss what being healthy
is to be. However, even from these uncomfortable situations there are things to
learn.
I will write
for now from personal experience (and hopefully only) from the first case where
to be healthy again is just a matter of resting and keeping yourself hydrated.
It is my 4th
day with a crappy cold, but there were some moments in the past few days that I
could only describe as “joy” for a number of reasons.
How often I
have the opportunity in a regular day to please me with a hot tea with lemon
and honey in bed? That is what my body screams for now and likely is much healthier
than the regular 3 coffees per day to keep the
senses up
and running at work.
How often I
cooked and ate a soup with absolutely no time pressure? Well, in a Monday to Friday routine I can
just wait to go to the canteen and eat a lunch fast enough to continue work and
finish on time. I really like to cook (on the weekends) but often I prefer to skip
the cooking part and treat my family and myself with some foreign food.
In my
particular case, exercising in a regular manner is as important as breathing,
and when I don’t train I feel terribly unhappy (and unhappiness is not really
appreciated at work or home). It does really make a difference in my life that
little hormone kick that a short routine of exercises brings. However these feelings
toward sports led me since I was young to stress myself and push “the machine”
to its limits. Resting time is just as important as training time. Because at
the moment I am not able to do 3 push- ups in a row, here again I have the
perfect opportunity to have some rest. I might do a full stop until New Year as
well, so that all those extra-calories from Christmas get a fair opportunity to
integrate themselves around my belly button.
Regarding
sleeping times, I have never had a better nap than that when I fell asleep in
my son’s bed while the kids were playing over me. I don’t have to mention that
the closest to a nap in a regular week is that 3-minute eyes shut on my way
back home in the train avoiding by all possible means all physical human
contact.
This kind
of sick state is an opportunity to concentrate on your health and your personal
needs. At the end you are the only one who can please what you deep in your
heart need, just some peace in body and mind.
And by the
way, if you find a mate with whom you can share your illness, even better. This
time I am sharing the sickbed with my 6 month old son who also has a cold. Last
year was with my back then 2 year old son. They, like me, do not appreciate
when one is not able to breath with all those colorful things coming out of your
nose, but at least we had and have each other to complain and stay the whole
day in warm jammies.
German In memory of Roger Tsien 01.02.1952 - 24.08.2016
The 2008 Nobel prize package for chemistry (1.4 million Euros including the trip to Stockholm) went to Roger Tsien, Osamu Shimomura and Marty Chalfie for their work on a protein called GFP (Green Fluorescent Protein), a protein that glows green in the dark.
Osamu Shimomura had a lifetime work collecting and studying the crystal jellyfish (Aequorea Victoria) where this protein can be found (that’s why these animals are bioluminescent). Shimomura was the first one to isolate the pure GFP protein (1962)
Douglas Prasher had in the 80’s and early 90’s seminal papers reporting the isolation of the DNA that encodes for GFP. Without this work it wouldn’t have been possible to use this protein in organisms other than the Jellyfish. (GFP has nowadays several applications, many animals are glowing green right now...for medical investigation).
Chalfie, who already by then made important discoveries on the neurologic architecture of worms (his papers were published in top class journals in the 80’s), got very interested in GFP after he heard a talk on bioluminiscence. He wanted to make their worms glow green using this protein and for this he contacted Prasher.
Unfortunately for Prasher, his money run out and couldn’t continue with his research on GFP, but as any other good-hearted scientist, he provided the material he created to many other scientists including Tsien and Chalfie. Chalfie, with this material, managed to make bacteria and his worms glow green (a paper published in “Science” 1994 where still Prasher was co-author).
Tsien, on the other hand, managed to improve the fluorescence of GFP by creating several mutant proteins (“Nature” paper in 1995).
To make a long story short, Shimomura, Tsien and Chalfie got the Nobel prize for GFP, while Prasher end up as a shuttle driver for a car dealership (for 10 dollar/hour).
As good gesture, Prasher was offered to assist to the Nobel Prize ceremony (it must had been something like going to the wedding of your ex-girlfriend) where he was acknowledged for his contribution to Chalfie and Tsien work.
In june 2010 Prasher was finally able to return to science with a small contract with a research firm. Later he was able to work in Tsien's lab (2012-2015)
Its not only important to know what you are doing, but also to be in the right place and the right time to have Nobel prize winning papers (or at least papers)
All the best to Prasher and those anonymous heroes who pave the way for the very few to the top. (Someone knows who or where are the guys that worked on those papers? And what are they doing now?)
Unluckily Roger Tsien passed away at the age of 64. It seems unexpected and he will be for sure missed by colleages, friends and all the community that got to know him (even through only his papers)
According to different sources, the world economy crisis did not stop
the weapon industry to keep growing. More than 300 billion Euros of profit made the most important weapon
industries only in 2010.
One can equivocally think that the weapon industry is to blame for the
increasing world violence, and that the profit that they made could much better
be invested in more loyal causes, but in reality are those that are buying weapons the real entities to blame.
Each country has its priorities and when a government decides to invest much more in weapons than
in education, then the weapon industries are not really to blame about it, but
rather the people and organizations that keep flowing cash into their arcs for
the acquisition of men-killing items
For one end, the weapon industries should pay higher taxes and should
actively be engaged in the reconstruction of cities that were severely damaged
by confrontations that are indirectly endorsed by the weapon industry. This kind of measurements would try to
balance the unfair profit that weapon industries made with the loss of human
lives and destruction of entire countries.
German It is so easy to write about
this topic. One only needs a 5 minute break to think about what really we like
to do and what makes us happy.
We people are in many ways
different, so what I write today is my personal opinion but I am quite sure
that other people will agree with me in different points because what makes us
happy is often common to different cultures and personalities.
I start with the most beloved
activities:
1. Eating, especially when one is hungry
and waited very long time for that dinner that probably is not the healthiest
one. For example that oily cheese burger with fries and a Coke. Many times is
rather quantity than quality what brings satisfaction because I know that eight
tacos are better than two, and with eight ingested Tacos I will have the extra
joy of the next day when they have to leave my body again. Ok... you can call
me gross but its true and no matter what especially the female readers think, I
know that returning them to the environment can be as pleasant as eating itself
(I think men will agree with me).
2. None of us would be here if our papas
and mamas wouldn’t have made out. And now we understand why we are like 7
billion people leaving right now. That is a lot of “loving” in only the past
100 years. An extra to this point is that different “loving” positions bring
more joy than others during the, what can be described as, one of the most
pleasant activities in the world.
3. Waking up every morning would not be
the same without that bitter coffee that is washed off my tongue with a sip of
water. 15 Minutes later I can feel my heart beating faster and I am ready for
the day (This fabulous invention works also perfectly after lunch).
4. About chemical dependencies: In my
case I got hooked up by the endorphins that are released in my body during
sports. Especially when I exaggerate and I am about to pass out. It is like a
„trip” and you can make it even better by jumping into mildly cold water (a pool,
river, ocean, lake, etc.) and feel how your body is being again cooled down. That
is simply an extraterrestrial feeling (Maybe that is one of the reasons why some
people think I am a masoquist).
5. After an intensive week at work,
music and even better with a cold beer, is the perfect remedy against all.
6. Meeting with good friends brings in
any case joy, and when that is combined with point No. 5, because of an old arithmetic
rule, it ends up being a double joy.
7. Sleeping, especially when is cold and
rainy outside, bring not only joy but inner peace. So much that one thinks that
our longest sleep, death, cannot be so bad after all. Maybe that is why we say
when someone travels to the other side “rest in peace”.
Maybe
these are some of the main joy bringers that one can wish for him/herself (at
least for me). An extra point that married people or people in a relationship
should mention (not only because it is true but also to avoid conflicts) is the
romantic time one spends with the partner. Quality time that makes the road of
life easier to travel (Additional information to be found in point 2)
I forgot that for many the
perfect job or a promotion at work is a joy bringer, but one must remember that
these moments might not come that often in comparison to points 1 to 7. However,
we would still regard them as moments that bring happiness to our lives.
Extra joy bringers:
Drink a half litter of soda
and burp as loud as possible
First fart of the day (Ladies…
please…. You know it’s true)
To take a piss when you just
can’t hold it anymore
Find money (doesn’t happen
often)
Accomplish a goal, e. g. loose
xx kilos, be champion of something, establish a new record, save a determined quantity of money, run xx
Km, lift xx kilos, complete a course, etc. In all these cases one needs a
lot of motivation and hard work, but the reward is usually very high.
So, it is time. Today was my last day as unemployed. After an 8 months break I finally found a job
and that in a very attractive company. Happier than me can only be my mother,
as she probably was more worried than me during this time. From the last day in
my previous job until now I have collected a bunch of experiences and learned a
lot. Today I will not write about why I changed my job (maybe some other time)
but I will write about my experience in the last months as unemployed. I can
say that right from the beginning as an unemployed I felt so relieved and
comfortable, probably because I was overworked and burned out of all the duties
and pressure I had in my previous jobs. Right
from the beginning as unemployed I tried to use my free time (that is my whole
time) as effective as possible in learning new things like….THE GERMAN
LANGUAGE! I had this desire very long time but because of the working hours I
could not actively learn it as one would do with an intensive language course.
I kept me busy for four months in different german courses with the goal of at
least reaching the level B2 (with which one can theoretically assist to the
university, which at some point was again in my plans). At the same time I
promised myself to try to keep fit, since I neglected all about doing sports or
at least doing some sort of physical activity. That is why I am going to the
gym now at least 2 times per week and this motivation had also a positive effect
in my wife’s attitude towards training, who although does not have the time
because of her work, tries to go to the gym as well.
In the past months I met many interesting people and made new very good
friends from who I will probably be writing about another time
But not everything was a blue sky, since the unemployed must actively
look for a new job, and that is exactly what I was also doing. From 64
applications I received only 5 invitations for interviews. I received on a
weekly basis the „No thanks, but wish you all the best in your future
endeavours“ email and I had days where I could only seat in front of the
computer waiting for the next declining.
This sort of stress was a little bit increased by the fact that I was
feeling “a bit” guilty for receiving the very generous allowance of the state
for being unemployed, and that as a foreigner. This was in fact more than I
monthly received during my doctoral studies when I used to have the 60 hours/week
.
I knew that I deserved this assistance from the state, since I paid my
unemployement insurance, but I wanted to return to the productive side of the
society and pay my taxes again.
I knew also that a very long break can be a carrier killer so I pushed me
harder in looking for a new job. However I still kept myself busy swimming in
the Danube, training in the gym, cleaning the house and cooking new recipes,
things that I did not do before and I really enjoyed doing them.
After seven months, my wife and I had a good feeling about one of my
applications in a company in which I pictured myself pretty well working in,
and that in a field that was relatively new and very interesting to me.
And one day the offer was glowing in my email. I did not think too long
to sign the contract, because to me looked like a dream job. Some days later I signed the contract and I have now only 36 hours until
I can start my new job. To this job I will bring loads of experience and I will
try to avoid those mistakes that I made in the past. I can already mention that
a work is nothing more than an occupation, one likes very much to do and this
should not be intoxicated with superfluous and needless expectations imposed by
oneself or by the boss (about that I would also be writing later)
German
