So I just write them here up.

A little statistics first: I and my friend from Russia have been driving a bicycle trip starting from Düsseldorf, then Duisburg, Xanten, Kleve, Nijmegen, Utrecht, Amsterdam, Zaardam, Keukenhof, Den Haag (Hague), Delft, Rotterdam and Antwerpen. In total, we biked 600 km in 10 days. 

We have also planned to visit Brussels, some smaller towns in France and then Paris, but we didn’t really had enough time for that, given the daily distance we could travel. I was the limiting factor for the latter one: with my relatively heavy city-bike, and around 20 kg of luggage (at least 30% of which I took for no reason due to lack of experience) on the rack limited my average speed to 12 kmh.

Our bikes have endured the trip pretty well: I only had to replace my bicycle stand, a lost screw in the rack and two broken spikes on the rear wheel; and in my friend’s bike a tube had to be replaced.

All in all, I liked this format with free biking, stopping at will at the nearest camping, and reserving a whole day sometimes for interesting cities. Sleeping in a tent was no prob at all, the only thing I cannot grasp is why the toilettes on the campings are necesserily so awful? Autobahn service areas know how to have decent facilities, at least in Germany, so why not learning from them? I’d rather pay something for each usage than having to schlep a roll of toilet paper with me… The same rant applies to food and drinks in the campings. One camping near Antwerpen had completely blown our minds: its snack corner was opened from 17:00 to 18:00.  Again, autobahn service areas show how it can be done better.

And so, the missing twits:

• A women in her 30ies: made up hair , tight business skirt, middle-high heels, riding 27 kmh on her bicycle. Uphill. Its Holland.
• Geek experience: must kill the hanging MapDroid process using Android Task Manager while driving the bike at 20 kmh in the rush hour Amsterdam traffic.
• The most dense bike traffic in the world is accomplished by least perfect bikes.
• Two facts about Hague : it has a sandy beach, and it has a Chinatown with nice gates.
• How do you know you have crossed the border between Netherlands and Belgium? People stop understand English and try to comminicate with you in French.
• Bike tunnels across the river in Rotterdam are ingenious.
• Did you know there is a huge technical univercity in Delft? I didnt know the name of the city until recently.
• Staying in the Camping Vliegenbos in Amsterdam was not a good idea, despite what the travel guide says. They have blue lights in the toilettes, and thats for good reason.

According to one book, you should be able to see a human profile here, according to another, it is a body with stomach and leg walking. Do you see them yet?

No?

How about the same character, but the way it has been written 3000 years ago (click on the image for more samples):

Better?

Do digits also have colors for you?

Dann… dann habe ich mich verändert.

IT ist nicht mehr mein Hobby, weil ich damit mehr als Genug auf der Arbeit zu tun habe. Ich habe also ganz wenig Interesse, darüber in meiner Freizeit zu sprechen. Um abzunehmen, fahre ich jetzt sehr viel Rad (mindestens 175 km die Woche, in Sommer kommen oft noch 30-50 km dazu). Ich bin also zwar bei weitem kein Leistungssportler, ganz unsportlich kann man mich aber auch nicht mehr nennen. Und nach einer unglücklichen Verliebtheit weiß ich jetzt romatische Filme sehr zu schätzen.

Was wäre nur mit meinen Freundschaften gewesen, wenn ich sie nach dem Prinzip gemeinsamer Interessen geschlossen hätte?..

Jetzt denke ich, dass Freundschaft eine reine Herzensangelegenheit ist.

Und zwar, geht es mir jetzt im Grunde genommen gar nicht schlecht. Ich habe vieles: Zeit, Geld, Wissen, Bekanntschaften. Natürlich findet sich immer die Möglichkeit, das alles für mich selbst zu nutzen. Versteht mich nicht falsch, ich habe nicht ZU viel davon. Doch ist das Sinn des Lebens? Sich möglichst gut weiter zu entwickeln, um dann im optimalen Zustand sterben zu dürfen?

Manchmal treffe ich Menschen, die mir am Herzen liegen. Wenn ich ihnen helfe, macht das Leben für mich mehr Sinn. Und wenn sie mir auch helfen, wird das Leben gar ziemlich erträglich. “Jeder stirbt für sich allein”, wusste zwar Fallada. Doch viele Wege führen dahin, und man muss nicht unbedingt den grausamsten folgen.

Soweit so gut. Nur, treffe ich selten Menschen, die mir am Herzen liegen. Und noch seltener liege ich einem/einer am Herzen…

In this post, I’ve gathered some traditional (and untraditional) spring festival wishes. By clicking on the links, you can easily send the wish to your beloved ones, parents, children, friends, collegues or actually anybody.

万事如意 all best wishes
心想事成 may your wishes come true
幸福安康 happiness and good health
平安快乐 safety and happiness
一帆风顺 single sail, gentle wind
恭喜发财 prosperious new year
笑口常开 life full of happiness and smiles
工作顺利 job to go smoothly
事业有成 success in all projects
无条件爱 unconditional love
自由 freedom
儿童 children
尊重 respect
理解 understanding
友谊 friendship
欣赏 appreciation

Or, you can see them all. This gallery is powered by silverhd.net, a new beta created by my collegues. The wishes are best viewed with Microsoft Silverlight.  I thank 于海婷 for the wishes and translating.

I’ve got it as an Xmas gift. The 550 page volume, published in 2009, turned out to be a serious work on geopolitics, full of tables and graphs. I don’t know if I read the book, because I’m afraid its content is too dry to be palatable for me. Besides, already the first paragraph is a bit hard for me to swallow:

Since 1945 the United States has been the world’s dominant power. Even during the Cold War its economy was far more advanced than, and more than twice large as, that of the Soviet Union, while its military capability and technological sophistication were much superior.

“Hey!!! I’ll show you the true size of our military power, you yankee, common, let’s fight as men do”, yelling the remains of a soviet patriot in me. “Fine, so there are no objections regarding economic power?” the author would probably say…

But this post is not inspired by this paragraph. It is the Acknoledgements chapter, the most astonishing Acknoledgements chapter I’ve ever read, and not funny at all:

My interest in East Asia dates back to a visit to the region in 1993 when I also happened to meet my wife to be, Harinder Veriah, on Tioman Island, Malaysia. The idea for this book dates back to 1996. In 1997-8 contracts were signed and plans drawn up for us to be based in Hong Kong for three years.

At the beginning of November 1998 we arrived in Hong Kong with our nine-week-old son, Ravi. Just fourteen months later, Hari died in the most tragic circumstances.

It was five years before I could resume work on this book. I would like to thank everyone who, in their different ways, gave support and helped me survive the darkest days anyone could possibly imagine [...]

My greatest debt of all is to Ravi, our son, who is now ten years old and who was just sixteen months when Hari died. It has been an unspeakably painful, sad and cruel decade but together we have found a way to play, live and grow.

Ravi, you have been my reason, the source of such pride and pleasure. Thank you for putting up with all those endless days and months when Daddy has been, in your words, in “his prison”, otherwise known as my study. What has kept me going are all the times in between that I have spent with you, messing about, enjoying your company, listening to you play the violin and taking delight in your ever-expanding range of interests and gifts: Mummy would have been thrilled.

This book is for you but, as you know, it is dedicated to the memory of your mother who I loved beyond all reason or belief. She would have been so proud of us having found the will and fortitude to complete the book despite the cruel hand of Fate. She cannot share this moment of pleasure with us. The aching emptiness of her absense stills any sense of elation.

And the dedication on the front page is

For Hari

My love for you knew no limits, nor has it dimmed with time. I miss you more than words can ever say.

I sympathize with the author. He is trapped, maybe for the rest of his life. I don’t think he would have been loving her that much, if she wasn’t died. Millions of tiny disagreements and microscopic dissappointments happening when you live together, would have faded his love. But now, he is unable to communicate with her, and so her image is frozen in his memory. And if he thinks about her every day, and I believe he does, her image is still burning in his heart. And his love becomes even deeper.

I don’t know if there is an exit from this trap. But I admire the author being so unbelievably strong to endure that nightmare for the ten long years.

The most well-known example is, probably, the white color, in european tradition meaning purity and innosence, but in Japan related to death.

My favorite is what you should do with birthday presents. One line of thought teaches to unpack them right away. By doing it, you allow the presenter to see how delighted you are because of the gift. Besides, if you don’t look at the present, the presenter may think you’re not interested in it, and therefore in him.

Another tradition believes it is better to unpack the present later and alone. If the present is too cheap, the presenter may be publicly ashamed of it. And by ignoring the present you are sending the message that the presenter is more imporant for you than the present.

Go figure what is better.

Today I’ve learned another example. The moon is something cold and evil (the opposite of the sun) in Europe. But in China, it seems to mean something pure and constant, like in the song 月亮代表我的心 (my love is like a moon).

And this made me thinking about invariants in the world cultures. I believe, the vision of friendship and love being the most important immaterial values is the same across most cultures (unfortunately, I cannot say “all” cultures, because I know one where it is not so). What else is invariant? Is “treat others like you want you’ll be treated” it?..

The life in a developing country is… pretty much possible. A development country is not such a deadly place like Iraq, Nord Korea or Ruanda, mind you. In fact, it is even possible to live the western life quality.

Of course, to do that, you would need to earn enough money. Much more money than the average. But it is not a problem: just find a job for an international company outsourcing their operations into your country.

Of course, as you’re earning much more than others, you start to pay more attention on your appearance, so you will feel discomfort each time you have to contact the sweaty and stinking crowd in the metro. Besides that, they are all pickpockets, aren’t they? But it is not a problem: just stop using public transportation, and buy a car.

Of course, your government is poor, so the roads and rather bad, if existent. But it is not a problem: just buy a jeep, and put a license plate indicating you’re from the government, so that police won’t stop you when you break the rules, agressively overtaking those ancient rusted vehicles of the normal crowd.

Of course, the normal crowd will be jealous of your success and will try to break into your house, rob you on the street, or just urinate on your door. But it is not a problem: move into an elite building complex, with a guarded territory, etc.

Of course, at some point of time you would have to leave the world of guarded complexes, air-conditioned cars, and modern offices. For example, when you have to go to your doctor, to your lawyer, or just go out for shopping and eating. But it is not a problem: there are elite doctors, elite lawyers, elite shopping malls and elite restaurants for you. Just pay in cash and know exactly what is elite and what’s not.

Of course, you will have children at some point. You don’t want to send them into a public school, with all those drug dealers, incompetent teachers still preaching communism and earning less than $100 per month,  failing heating, and normal crowd children. And you can’t really lock your children into a guarded territory. But it is not a problem at all: you will send your children to study abroad, into Spain, UK or Germany.

This will also solve the problem with the military service, because you of course don’t want to allow your children to be mobilized into your army, which is more a forced labor and health ruinning organization than anything else.

Of course, to be in the elite, you have to have money. You’ll need bank and saving accounts, and credit cards. And you want to be able to spend that money. But you will have a ton of problems with Visa, and PayPal, because there are so many hacking attacks from your country so that they will block their services. But it is not a problem at all: you register an account on a fake address in the US, and use VPN software to tunnel your IP address. This will also solve the problem of other internet services leaving or not present in your country.

Of course, you can do all of that. But, once being on vacation in Europe, you will walk on a normal street, in the evening. The street will be illuminated, so you don’t have to carry a flashlight with you. The people you meet on your way will not try to urinate on you, so you don’t need to have a bodyguard with you. You can put your wallet into your back pocket and, with a reasonable probability, it will stay there. So you don’t need to think about checking your wallet every other minute. The buildings on the street will not be covered by a nasty aggresive advertisement. So your romantic and relaxed mood won’t be disturbed.

And then, you will suddenly think: why the hell am I spending my precisious life time and energy on all those workarounds, if I can get the high living standard here, gratis, and concentrate on a really important things?