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| More Monkey BusinessHappy half-birthday to me! There's no real reason for this entry except that I haven't updated since March 4th. So, I thought I'd commemorate my return from a one-month Xacation and my surprisingly old age at the same time.
Life is good! For the first time in many moons, I'm quite pleased with the status quo. No details now, since I've got no time to be cleverly vague. While my creative engine is refueling, look at thils lolol picture, since I can't find anything else to post:
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| Warning: blogs in web browser may be deeper than they appearIt's hard to justify idleness when I've got nothing further to lose and lots to gain by attempting to improve a circumstance. Time reportedly heals all wounds, but maybe being proactive can hasten the process and help avoid regret. Especially if those wounds were self-inflicted by proxy.
Nobody wins in a stalemate, so even if breaking the deadlock means conceding defeat in pursuit of mutual victory, it's probably worth the effort. In the event that you fail to realize your goal, at least you can give yourself a proverbial pat on the back in recognition of a sincere effort, even if there is no "next time."
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| Naked people everywhereI went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the first time today, and it was awesome! I had never been to an art museum before (and I really had no desire to), but my first experience was really cool. Of the exhibits I saw (the place is massive, so my short stay there limited me to only seeing a few different areas), I really liked the Egyptian exhibits, the medieval armor/weaponry exhibits, and the Greek/Roman exhibits. History is fascinating to me in recent years, which is strange, since it was probably my least favorite subject in high school.
It's so fascinating how much people managed to create using just their hands (or paint without Photoshop retouching), and the detail and precision of the sculptures is really amazing. People really liked to be sculpted naked back in the day.
Man, I love museums. It's too bad that I only stayed for an hour or two - one could probably spend all day in there. I'm going to try to spend more time going to museums on the weekend...it seems like an educational way to utilize free time and is a darn good way to get out of the house. Let me know if you'd like to join. 
Special thanks to my excellent tour guides!
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| A belated Valentine's Day haiku that I forgot to post yesterdayValentine's Day sucks
when you're sitting on a bus
for three hours straight
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| Hallo!Disclaimer: I didn't proofread or edit this entry due to lack of time.
I am happy to report that week 2 went better than the first. The initial discomfort of being injected into the heart of an unfamiliar society has begun to wear off, and I don't have such a drab outlook on being here anymore. Since I've pretty much accepted the fact that I can't communicate effectively 95% of the time, I now waste less time (although it's certainly still not zero time) getting frustrated and utilize less English and more sign language. Some of the locals who speak English are friendly enough to help out if they spot me having a hard time, which is nice, and my German colleagues are extremely helpful and hospitable.
Something that's struck me about Germany is that the country, or at least the part that I'm in, is quite serious about energy conservation. The steps that they take in this effort don't really make life unbearably inconvenient, either. Grocery bags are not free (presumably to encourage people to reuse bags) and you can bring all sorts of bottles back to the grocery store for serious reimbursement. I purchased 6 1.5-liter (written as 1,5 liters, since the decimal point and thousand-separation comma are reversed here) bottles of water from the supermarket near my office, and was charged about 2 euros extra. This cost can be recovered by returning the empty bottles to the grocery store for recycling.
For another example, the toilets here have less water in them (which is a little inconvenient) and have two flush settings: one for #1 (low power, less water) and another for #2 (brain-sucking vortex power, more water). It seems like something small at first, but when you figure that 10 million people (as an example only... there are some 80 million people in Deutschland) going to the bathroom 3 times a day probably use hundreds of millions of gallons of waters per day (actually, given my current location and newfound worldliness, I should probably say billions of liters). So, logically, cutting that usage by 1/3 (estimate) could save hundreds of millions of gallons/liters of water per year. Granted, this logic isn't flawless, since toilet water gets processed and recycled and such, but it's so simple that it doesn't make sense not to put efforts like this in place elsewhere in the world. While I'm on the topic of toilets, a side note: the toilet seats
here have a thinner rim and/or larger diameter than your standard-issue
run-of-the-mill toilet seat in the U.S. This takes some adjustment for
unexpecting butts and could pose a hazard to exceptionally thin women,
small children, and household pets.
Other conservation methods are even less intrusive. My current hotel is located right across the strasse from the hauptbahnhof, the main train station in Munich. This facility is rather large and has several floors to accommodate both the u-bahn subway and s-bahn aboveground trains. I intentionally got myself lost in the train station last weekend and took the stairs between floors since the escalators were off. However, much to my surprise, when I decided to take a halted escalator down to the next floor, it magically activated when I stepped on its platform!  This simple tactic probably saves a bunch of electricity and helps fat foreigners (or some uninformed, fat, sausage-and-beer-loving Germans) lose some weight by tricking them into taking the stairs. In a similar vein, many areas have motion-activated lighting, which could also be dangerous, though there doesn't seem to be too many crazy axe-wielding bums around here.
A lot of the things I've noticed about Germany have not been so positive, though. People here smoke like chimneys and there are no regulations in place to prevent my lungs from blackening by proxy in restaurants or other public areas. The food is very boring and incredibly unhealthy on a whole. Sausages and beer are by far the kings of dietary components in Bavaria (from what I've seen), and neither of these substances are very good for you. Potatoes, cabbage, and lots of pastries (croissants, donuts, pretzels) comprise the lesser royal family and the rest of the royal court. On the second day here, my coworker and I were forced to eat a chicken leg and potato/meat soup for breakfast. It was definitely tasty, but far from what my stomach has come to expect at the beginning of a day. Basically, the typical bavarian diet (from what I've seen, and this is probably a gross exaggeration) conjures up images of a caveman with a club in one hand and some slaughtered animal in the other. Ooga booga. Not a very healthy way to live, if you ask me, and it certainly doesn't suit my palette.
People in Germany aren't accustomed to working long hours. We're workaholics by comparison in the USA, since there is a German law that protects employees from working more than 10 hours in a single day.  This promotes a much more relaxed lifestyle and a "I'll get it done tomorrow" attitude, something that would never fly in corporate America. I'm not sure how much this actually affects productivity at work, though, since one could argue that it boosts productivity by yielding workers who are more refreshed and feel less overworked. Stores also close down early (5-8pm depending on the size of the store) on Saturday and no shops are open on Sunday.
The first week here was depressing partially because of the weather. It was cold and snowy with a generally drab backdrop everywhere I went. I had high hopes to explore Munich and take pictures over the first weekend, but those dreams were hampered by inclement weather. Mother Nature was PMSing last week and expressed herself through the use of bitter cold, biting wind, and completely gray skies; however, this week she seems to be in a much better mood, as the weather gradually improved every day. By Friday, we even had blue skies! The improved conditions (which yielded much-improved morale) carried through the weekend, which, sadly, ended today.
This weekend was also much better than last because I actually got out of the city. The original plan was to rent a car on Saturday and go skiing in the Alps. We planned to meet at 8:30am for breakfast and pick up a rental car at 9am. Unfortunately, this schedule never manifested itself (I overslept until 9:15, when I called my colleague who informed me that she and the other people overslept too) and we never ended up going. It worked out pretty well, though, because my colleagues ended up getting stuck on a 2-hour conference call that would have seriously cramped their style (or pissed off upper management) while skiing. We had a nice (except for the smoke; man, I really like using parentheses) sushi-and-chicken dinner and then went out and had fun.
Anyway, today we rented a car and drove out to some monastery that brews beer about 50 kilometers outside of Munich. It was my first experience driving on the autobahn, but unfortunately it was in a speed-limited zone. My maximum speed was about 140km/h, or about 87 mph. People in Audis and Porsches were flying past at ridiculous speeds, but I didn't want to push my luck in a foreign country. Maybe next time we'll go to one of the unrestricted areas. Back on topic, the scenery at the monastery was nice. I didn't sample the beer, but from what my coworkers had to say, that was excellent too.
I took a lot of pictures over the past few days (142 to be exact). Sheesh, that's about 852 million pixels. You can view them here. There are no descriptions yet, but just click around and you'll see some random crap. There are some pictures where you can see the Alps near the end of the album (the last bunch of pictures). Anyone who wants to Photoshop them and make them look nice, please do so and help me out! 
I just have sooo much to write about and sooo little time to do it. If only I could get more free time during the week, I wouldn't feel so rushed on the weekends. OK, that's it for me now. Come back soon!
I'll leave you with two pictures to quench your probably-nonexistent thirst. The first, which manages to showcase some awesome architecture and my terrible photography skills AT THE SAME TIME:
 This is Marienplatz, which was the market and tournament center of Munich during the Middle Ages. I think that castle-looking structure is the old city hall, but I'm not sure. I will take more pictures of this and other cool looking buildings in the daylight; they are really awesome sights to take in.
For number two (har har), here is a funny sign, which translates to "exit":
But, of course, my colleagues and I were quite amused to repeatedly call it "ass-fart."
As always, come back soon for another update. Hopefully it'll be less than a week away.
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