Sunday, October 14, 2007

I heart Autumn



At Laboe...



...the only beach I know to have a submarine for tourists to go in on it.






This weekend has been glorious - sunny and still with the blue skies contrasting nicely with the red, orange and brown leaves which meander gently to the ground all over the city. We went to the beach yesterday and enjoyed what will certainly be the last rays of sun in Kiel this year (prove me wrong Kiel, prove me wrong)...

Techno haze

I used to be good at computers. I can still remember a certain boss I had when I was sixteen saying behind my back "Hanna'll probably have a few problems with the new computer system" and the feeling of satisfaction I got at proving him vey wrong - in fact I was much better at it than he was, having grown up with computers.

At uni I used Word to write and format essays, and Excel to calculate and present my biology stats. I made graphs, tables, added whole pages worth of footnotes without any problems. When I edited the uni magazine I learnt the basics of photoshop and front page. I arranged pages, edited photos, flipped between programs, dealt with a cranky old network and crappy printers. No worries.

Then, somewhere along the line, I got stuck. It has taken me this long to work out Windows XP, and they've just released Vista. The other day I couldn't get my internet to work and was ready to throw the laptop out the window when Simon and my flatmate both said: "Check the antenae." What bloody antenae? Simon clicked a button on the edge of my laptop I'd never noticed before and voila, the internet is working.

This is not an isolated incident. At work my computer wasn't playing sound flies and my boss asked me: "Are all the latest updates there?" Huh? He changed a few settings and again, problem solved.

I would like to know when are these people learning this stuff? Do they read the whole manual or what? Or am I just missing some underlying social knowledge that others pick up effortlessly? Since when are these things common knowledge and why wasn't I informed? And also... how do I upload pictures from my camera through bluetooth?

Sunday, October 07, 2007

Thai tips

In January we're going to Thailand for two weeks - and as yet I have no idea where. Tips and recommendations urgently needed.

Monday, October 01, 2007

Mountains of strüdel




Well I'm 29 and after a very long day of going to two social events with my lovely swiss cousin, who knows how to enjoy an evening well beyond the point it actually is evening, as well as flying back to Kiel, I feel it. But it's a nice feeling.
We spent the last week in Vienna and Zürich, establishing beyond doubt that German sounds stranger the more southerly you go, and adding kilos to the waistline with strüdel, chocolate and ,mmmmm, swiss cheese.