No job. They have all of their bases covered. The airport is equipped with a wastewater treatment system design to treat basically all of the water onsite, including rainwater. The Erdinger moos watershed is monitored for water table stability and the groundwater chemical composition.

It was a nice exercise but I must admit it isn’t fun when you aren’t needed. At least I have a suit.*

Somehow I also find myself with a head cold giving to me by man of germ-attracting steel. I’ve decided to make some mint tea with fresh leaves out of my 4th floor garden. That I can be proud of today.

*I found a nice selection at the Karstadt at Stachus and if you are on a budget H&M has a some goods too, although sizes are limited.

I’ll be participating in a qualification meeting on Thursday. They may want my previous experience in water resource management. Why do they always build airports on wetlands?

Potential Job = gotta shine. Think positive, be positive, act positive, Heza. Maybe I’ll be coming in for a landing.

Thank god I have time to prepare.. but I’ve got a butt load of Einsenderaufgaben to complete by the 7th.

I think I need a suit. I think I need to finish my homework but words like Inventar and Inventur or Deckungsbeitrag and Stückdeckung are bugging me big time. I think I need a strong drink.

Oh. Spain (1-0). You were the better, faster, more aggressive team. Congrats. I hope Germany has stopped sulking because it could have been a lot worse. Now back to car-honking-less nights in Munich.

Maybe you can tell: There’s been a pause about expat life and such lately. I’ll admit I’m not very good at finding the funny things about living in Germany. The things I find funny are probably too Onion-esque to publish here. I think I’m on the up-and-up with some authority on the challenges and the pleasantries that Germany has to offer and this seems to get better over time. But you know, these topics are better documented elsewhere, nearby, and somewheres yonder. My focus the past few months has been intensely trying to integrate and accept. This has been cutting into any qualitative thinking related to blogging.

It’s not that I never encountered such challenges in my homeland, where the more I resist, the more exhausting life is. And I’m not talking about being Borg-ed or subjected to a Germanizing coup on my person. It is also resisting the temptation to find blame, make excuses, and for wanting to escape. There are days when I feel like I’m losing myself and other days that I’ve suddenly gained a whole me but without the added strength. At home, I managed to figure it out to some degree and life was easy, if not too easy.

It’s not that things are lacking here either. Some things I lack from the U.S. are more annoyances I gladly do without. On the top of my head I can think of fast food, gossip, driving in traffic as fitting those lacks. At least here I’m not tempted at the same severity, I don’t understand it, and I live in a walking 50 m to a few kilometers radius from everything I need.

Really, I’m pretty snug where I am. I have friends here to ground me and I there are moments when I receive an encouraging message from friends and family back home that really uplift me. Sometimes I wouldn’t know it after reading the latest posts. But that’s the way it is when you are going through environmental and internal changes. The world just tugs differently on me here and at times I can’t believe how hard it is to get used. It takes time and effort. So this pause may continue until I can report with a fresh head.
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I had a positive interview on Thursday but again, it is hard to shake those thoughts of doubt away: “We like you, you fit us, but not sure if we can convince the customer based on your technical experience. But let’s see.” I never thought I needed a PhD to be an engineer in Germany to secure a job. You don’t really. But to walk in with only a Bachelors of Engineering in anything other than mechanical or electrical, the pickings are small. So school starts up in March, starting with a new discipline from scratch: Business informatics. All along, the interviews continue.

stress, stress, stress!

[Update] Not so stressed now, but still the pressure is on. Another heza.u.f.ed.up has further limited my options for this coming year. I’m cooking in my own sweat and I can read the face of the interviewer -IN, whatever girl with a BWL degree, sitting across from me that I sound like an idiot as I sputter German words out like a broken robot. She doesn’t look through me, she looks out the window 6 inches from my head. Yes, I noticed. Why did you even invite me, Miss -IN?

But I’m learning. I have to get better at this.

So about the song: I don’t have any holes in my nose and the teenage woes are luckily behind me. Yet I find myself in that vacuum once again, searching for my niche in German life. In vain I try to block out external noise that prevents me from thinking straight. Some how this song by the Doctors, er, Die Ärzte just fits this post.

“Denk an deine Zukunft, denk an deine Eltern. Willst du, daß wir sterben?”

Artist: Die Arzte
Album: Junge
Title: Junge