just a quick entry over a nice way to actually do some good while getting some nice stuff for it. Quite some Indie developers of fine Mac apps have joined together to give all the money they get tomorrow for their apps to organizations that currently try to help the poor people in Haiti. Check out the joint website and get some nice apps while spending money for relief!

I’m in for Clipstart, Default Folder X, Instapaper Pro and Tweety 2 – thus gonna spend about 50€ and get awesome apps I wanted to have for quite some time Great offer, great action, go and help!

Take care, Strothi

I’m real sorry for this redundant excuses of mine for not being able to keep up blogging, but I just and plain simply wasn’t able to or had other things to do… As you know, I came back to Germany on the 16th of December and since then I think I have had only one day, where I did not see anybody in terms of meeting friends or family (though I enjoyed that very much) or worked like nothing good…

New Year…

While I had planned to celebrate New Year’s Eve in Berlin, my plans changed while being in a little village close to Hamburg at Natasha’s place. As I did not had any real plans on what to do in Berlin, her idea to celebrate the new year together with her and a friend of ours, Fride, was gladly take up. Thus instead of hanging around at some anonymus party in Berlin, I spent some great days with the girls. We prepared a fantastic menu for the last dinner in 2009 and got very relaxed into 2010 – perfect

Getting back into my life…

Since I arrived in Berlin the “real life” hit me quite hard. While my internship at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research started off very well (in terms of everybody being nice and pretty laid back), my other activities kept me quite busy… While I’m not going to outline all the stuff going on, I think this weekend is explanatory:

Friday I started the day trying to solve a hell lot of problems connected to the session of the jury, which is going to take place next Friday here in Berlin. As many of you know I’m working for Model G8 Germany being the Head of the Summit Organization. Our deadline for the applications to be part of the delegation2010 was the 31st of December 2009. Until today all the received applications got peer-reviewed and rated by our team, because the independent jury will only get three candidates for each of the nine positions. Thus we had to figure out, which three. Meanwhile on Friday, we neither had a proper jury nor a room to accommodate them. Friday afternoon I attended a workshop organized by 360° – the journal I’m working for – on PR, which was extremely useful. To make it short, after dinner I worked until half past two to transcribe interviews I did in India for my university project.

Saturday me and Marius – the guest I accommodated during the meeting of the members of 360° – got up at seven to be at the venue in time. The first part of the day was dedicated to review what had happened over the last year with 360° and the question, who would candidate for the two open positions in the steering committee besides Marius. I had been asked beforehand to do it but denied due to time-constrains. Still, at the session my name was raised by a lot of people who said a lot of nice stuff about me To make it short, I resisted the temptation and finally, with Tine and Inga, we found two very capable nice girls who are now heading 360° together with Marius After a quite short dinner I got back home in order to work on the interviews again, while my guest went out partying with the other folks…

Sunday morning I finished the last interview before moving over to the breakfast with the crew of 360°, which was followed by an intense but productive round of discussions. I left early in order to power nap for 2 hours and then started again to work on getting all the data of the peer-review process in order. Unfortunately, only half of my team got the deadline right and some didn’t pay attention to my orders on how to do it – resulting in more work. Thus I worked until half past two this morning until I had all things done. A big thank you goes to the ones who helped me during that process and took over the work others should have done!!!

This morning we now finalized the list of candidates for the jury session and already send it off. The jury has now 6 quite qualified members and we’ve a room Moreover I finally got in touch with the office of the chancellor so that I can coordinate my planning with them for the workshop that is supposed to happen in March to prepare the delegates for the real summit in May Afterwards I met with my project group in order to coordinate our presentation which is going to be due in 11 days…

So that’s it. Unfortunately I have not been able to meet a lot friends here in Berlin since I returned and I’m sorry for that, but I hope that if you read this post, you’ll understand why. I hope that I’ll have more time after the jury session on Friday…

I hope you’re doing fine and will get in touch once I find a free minute to do so.

Take care, Strothi

I’m enjoying my time with my family and friends and look forward to some relaxing days at home in Osnabrück Wherever you are, I wish you all a wonderful christmas time! By the way, the pic above was taken here at my mom’s place along with a few other pics which you can find on SmugMug

Enjoy your time with family and friends

it’s been quite a while since I wrote something but the last couple of weeks have been really stressful and I had no time to blog about the stuff going on. I’ll report about the last two weeks into more detail in another post later this weekend, but I just wanted to tell you that I’m now back in Germany.

I came back on Wednesday evening and as predicted I have been busy since I hit German ground… Now I’m in Oldenburg at Matze’s place and look forward to some relaxing days I haven’t had a chance to take sometime for me and think about the sudden change, thus answering the question “How does it feel to be back?” is kinda tricky… I guess I’m still somehow in Delhi and will be until I settle back into my life here in Germany and have time to think about it.

Actually though there’s one thing that always reminds me where I am: The weather! In Berlin we had MINUS 12° today and while it’s here in Oldenburg a little warmer (-7°), here’s way more snow than in Berlin. In Delhi we had (in case we had sun) about 20-25° so this 30° difference is quite a thing… Moreover, I totally forgot about “winter-weather” in Germany before I flew to India so I had no “winter-stuff” in Berlin. However, my mum send me a “care-packet” with gloves and a nice cap so that I wouldn’t freeze to death I guess that’s exactly what mums are for, right?

Alright, I’ll be in Osnabrück on Monday and my German mobile is working again, so give me a call if you happen to be in town as well. As stated above, I gonna blog about the last 2 weeks in more detail over the coming days

Enjoy your winter-time,

Best, Strothi

over the last weekend I experienced the most intense shock I’ve had for quite some time… While I was visiting the Amber Fort in Jaipur together with Ana I was taking lots of pictures and as the sun was shining, I had my Lens Hood on the objective which turned out to be essential…

Ana and me went through the Fort and at one point we were going down a small stairway when I suddenly lost my balance and crashed full force down onto the stairs… As Ana was in front of me, I guess I did not see the sand on the stairs due to her shadow, thus stepped right on the sand and boom… I had my D90 in my right hand and thus tried not to land on it… Instead I landed with my full weight on both elbows (ouch!) and next thing I heard was a real ugly sound of breaking plastic… Totally in panic I turned around to see that the Lens Hood had broken into two pieces BUT neither the D90 nor the objective seemed to be damaged

Still being under shock, really hurt, I got up to check upon the D90 and focused on the next visible thing: An exit sign. After I had checked that the D90 took the picture as wanted I felt relieved but saw some Indians standing next to the sign who had thought that I was taking pics of them and therefore started to pose for me… Somehow I managed to make a few pics in order to satisfy them and then walked a bit shaky away…

Gosh, I just don’t want to think about the camera being broken and am unbelievably relieved and happy that I used the Lens Hood. I guess when the cam touched ground it did so first with the Lens Hood which, due to its breaking, took most of the energy and thus saved the objective and body

Next item to shop: A new Lens Hood

Take care, Strothi

BTW: I’m fine, got a little scratch and my left elbow is still not entirely alright, but it’ll be soon!

as promised here some impressions of our trip to Jaipur After I had successfully convinced Ana to finally leave Delhi we had to take a train early on Saturday and catch one back to Delhi right the next day as Ana had to work Friday and Monday whereas I’m really flexible in terms of when and where to work… As the train to Jaipur needs 5,5 hours from Delhi, we opted to start on Saturday at half past four in the middle of the night in order to reach Jaipur in the morning.

Catching that train became a little tricky: I had ordered a cab to be at my place at half past three so that we would have enough time to get to the station, but in contrast to all the times before, it just didn’t show up. So I called the driver, but his number wasn’t working. A few minutes later the driver called me and it became clear, that he had no idea where to go due to a severe lack of being able to communicate in english! My Hindi skills didn’t help us much as well so I told Ana that we should just go to the Market. As he wasn’t there I pulled her further to the only open gate in my area and luckily there he was… But that wasn’t the end of the story. On our way to the station I already had a feeling that I should have checked twice for the right station, but the ticket was in my backpacker in the trunk. Guess what, having 25 minutes left I found out shortly after our arrival at New Delhi Train Station (NDLS) that the train would leave from Old Delhi (DLI). Great… But remembering my adventure with Navarun a few weeks back I was sure to still be able to make it. Some lucky driver got hold of me and charged me about ten times the price of the way but at that moment all I wanted was to get us to the station. Sitting in the car, I was a little shocked to see the remaining time and thus prepared myself to not reach the station in time only to find out later that the clock in the car was ten minutes ahead of time…

Finally we reached the station, got into our wagon and started our journey The train had beds to sleep on as you can find them as well in Germany, though I was a bit too long for them… Still, Ana and me did the best out of it When we were supposed to arrive time-wise in Jaipur, I asked a guy whether the next station would be Jaipur. He replied “yes” but didn’t mention, that it was not the “central station” but the one before. As the hotel had said that the walk from the station to the hotel would be a ten minutes walk we opted for doing that, not knowing that a) we were at the wrong station and thus b) the map couldn’t help us. Finally I got that we had gone off at the wrong one and hailed a rickshaw driver who finally brought us to our hotel…

After this kind of stressy/chaotic journey we were very happy to find the hotel to be a great place! Especially the restaurant on the rooftop was a very nice spot to chill and enjoy great food. So in case you’re going to Jaipur, stay at “Hotel Pearl Palace” or stop by at the restaurant! After we finally got into our nice room, we took some rest and then started off to see the “Pink City”. Everybody had told us about “Old Jaipur” and its beauty so we thought that it was a good idea to walk there and grasp a bit of the atmosphere in town – stupid thought!

Walking over to Old Jaipur turned out to be a quite longer walk than expected plus Old Jaipur was kind of really disappointing. We had an Old Jaipur in our minds with calm little streets and nice architecture. Guess what, while indeed everything was “pink”, there was so much noise, traffic and people on the street that caused us to dislike it. The only plus: Within half an hour we met three very nice locals that gave us good hints on what to do and what not and so we decided to drive out of the city to the “Water Palace”.

View photos at SmugMug

Well, now you see my pics which look astonishing, still the Water Palace itself was unreachable thus nothing big to do. Luckily I pulled Ana over to some kind of a temple further up the street and that was really great. Over there, the atmosphere was super relaxing, lots of nice people and nice architecture – YEAH As we spend the entire afternoon over there I was lucky enough to take some night shots with my D90 and in these moments I know why I spend that much money for my camera… We ended the day on the rooftop of our hotel enjoying a great dinner and fell pretty much being dead into the bed…

View photos at SmugMug

After a very relaxed morning we decided to go to the “Amber Fort” which is a bit outside of Jaipur. The Fort itself was really great to see and we had a great time over there – with a small exception… In order to avoid the chaos from the day before we got back to our hotel in time and went to the right, the central station The way back went flawless and we arrived home safe and sound My personal success story was, that some guy who travelled with us was quite interested into the stuff I was reading and doing (sorting pics/reading german news) while trying to kill the remaining hours on the way back. As he wasn’t speaking any English we had to communicate in Hindi. And what shall I say, with my limited Hindi skills, my little notebook from class and lots of helpful gestures we talked for about one and a half hours over Jaipur, India, Delhi and Germany!!! Kind of strenuous, but really great! In Jaipur one of the guards had told us some details after he had found out that I’m speaking Hindi as well and I actually managed to understand it quite well!

View photos at SmugMug

Alright, now we’re back in Delhi, working… Today I send out a few e-mails in order to do some interviews for my project and already got 2 confirmed – great. What starts to bother me more and more is that I have to start of preparing myself to leave Ana, Delhi and India today in two weeks!!! That’s going to be hard, as I really would like to stay here for some time, but that ain’t possible (even though soooo many tell me to just do so). But once being back in Germany right from the first day I’ve each day up to x-mas planned with work/fun stuff and in January I will start working for the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research while doing all the usual stuff aside from that. Guess once I hit German ground, my “chilling and relaxing-time” I had here in Delhi is going to be over for the following half year. So many things to do, so many things to think about, so many uncertainties… Wait and see. The only thing that is for sure: It’s not going to be boring… (But did it ever get that far anyways…?)

Take care, Strothi

kaum aus Jaipur zurück und schon gibt’s wieder so viel, über das ich bloggen will, aber keine Zeit dafür habe, aber naja… Heute mal zwei erfreuliche Meldungen: 1. Der gute Horst (Köhler), unser aller Präsident hat erklärt, dass er seinen Karl Otto nicht unter das Zugangserschwerungsgesetz setzen will, weil er noch “zusätzliche Informationen braucht”. Kurz und knapp hat die Zeit das in einem schönen Kommentar beleuchtet, lesenswert

Horst Köhler soll nun einem der umstrittensten Vorhaben der vergangenen Legislatur seinen Segen geben in dem Wissen, dass kaum jemand das Projekt noch will. Mit seinem Wunsch nach „Informationen“ spielt er den Ball zur Regierung zurück.

Ich hätte mir ja gewünscht, dass der Horst einfach mal sagt: “Jungs, dat is Verfassungswidrig, da gibt’s keine Unterschrift!” und Punkt, aber das hat er sich dann doch noch nicht getraut. Naja, macht nix, kann ja noch kommen

Darüber hinaus scheint auch das SWIFT Abkommen auf der Kippe zu stehen, wie Jens drüben beim Spiegelfechter erklärt:

Wenn die deutsche Regierung sich an die Verfassung hält, so ist das SWIFT-Abkommen seit heute de facto tot. Im Bundesrat haben sich nämlich die Landesfürsten überraschend gegen eine Enthaltung in Brüssel und für ein Veto entschieden.

Gut, mal abwarten, ob das wirklich so kommt. Wenn ja, dann wäre das ja mal selten positiv

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Update: Und zack, da ist’s passiert: Unser toller Innenminister hat sich um das Bundesrats-Votum und die Proteste von FDP und CSU keinen feuchten Kehricht geschert und sich fröhlich enthalten. Und schwupps, da haben wir nun das Swift abkommen…

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So, alles schon ein zwei Tage alt, aber trotzdem wichtig

Mehr zu Jaipur und anderem Zeugs kommt später.

Und weg, Strothi

ist ne Weile her, dass ich das letzte mal zu dem Themenkomplex was gepostet habe, aber heute komm’ ich nicht drum rum. Wie man drüben beim Handelsblatt nachlesen kann, wird unser Innenminister sich wohl auf der EU-Ebene beim SWIFT-Abkommen mit den USA enthalten.

EU? SWIFT? USA? Wat is los? Nun, bisher wurden Überweisungen die in Europa erfolgten in den USA verarbeitet, da dort die Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift) ihr Datenzentrum stehen hat. Da haben sich die Amerikaner dann direkt mal eingeklinkt und alle Transfers auf Terrorismus hin überwacht. Während das bei den Amis legal ist, ist dies bei uns noch lange nicht. Nun hat sich Swift überlegt, das Datenzentrum nach Europa zu verlagern. Das fanden die Amerikaner nicht so lustig und haben der EU ein Abkommen “vorgeschlagen” (”diktiert” trifft es wohl besser), bei dem sie den Zugriff auf die europäischen Daten behalten können. Bisher hatten sich einige Eu-Länder, unter anderem auch Deutschland, gegen dieses Abkommen gewehrt. Nun sieht es allerdings so aus, das unser Innenminister seine Blockadehaltung aufgeben und sich enthalten will. Das widerspricht nicht nur dem Koalitionsvertrag, sondern auch diversen rechtsstaatlichen Prinzipien.

“Die wollen doch nur Terroristen fangen!” kann man jetzt sagen, aber da sind wir mal wieder bei der Frage, was mehr Gewicht haben sollte, Freiheit oder Sicherheit? Das die Amerikaner da andere Schwerpunkte setzen als wir Europäer, dürfte bekannt sein. Warum sich jeder von uns darüber Gedanken machen sollte, erklärt der sehr gute ZEIT Artikel im Detail viel besser und ich rate euch dringend, den mal eben durchzulesen (auch wenn’s deprimierend ist)! Kleiner Auszug als Antwort auf die Frage, was uns das angeht:

Und warum muss uns das interessieren? Ganz einfach, weil man – sollte man irgendwie in das Raster der amerikanischen Fahnder geraten – keinen Zugriff aufs eigene Konto mehr hätte. Sie würden sofort gesperrt, damit über sie nicht weiter Terrorismus finanziert werden kann. Ein unter diesem Verdacht gesperrtes Konto aber hätte schnell üble Auswirkungen. Und der Betroffene keine Chance, diesen selbst zu widerlegen, gäbe es doch für ihn keine Rechtsmittel, um dem zu widersprechen und eine unabhängige Überprüfung zu erreichen.

Tja, da isses dann weg, das Konto. Und jetzt überlegt mal 2 Minuten was passiert, wenn euch jemand euer Konto sperrt. Genau, nicht lustig! Gar nicht lustig!

Und weg, euer Strothi

after my very pessimistic post on what can be achieved in Copenhagen in a couple of weeks, today I would like to encourage you to help making our voices – demanding for a real and ambitious agreement – heard by the leaders of the world. If you believe that climate change is a thing to worry about and that we should do something about it, first think about your actions and how you could change your way of living to be more sustainable and climate friendly and then please sign the petition that calls for action of our politicians!

There’s no point in singing the petition while not reflecting about your own way of living! Yes, our politicians have to get things finally on track, but ultimately it is us, the very people on this, our, earth that are responsible. It’s always easy to blame others, so stop blaming, start acting! You don’t know where and how? Well, just google a bit, read a few articles and go and check your Carbon Footprint! Right now I’m in Delhi. Over here at night, it’s really cold but the houses don’t have any heating systems, so we’re sitting here wearing two pullovers. I don’t want you to shut down your heating system, but maybe you could think about turning your system 2 or 3 degrees lower. This does have an impact and even if it’s small, still it will help! And that’s just one minor example. It’s not some document signed by the leaders of the world that will help us fight global warming but it’s us and our actions!

By the way, some might have heard about the “scandal” e-mail messages going forth and back between some quite known climate change researchers. While the messages are certainly not helpful in fighting climate change and gonna be taken up by deniers to mislead people, whatever happened over there, there’s no reason to doubt that climate change is actually happening. The temperature isn’t rising? Well, that’s no argument, as it’s way harder to predict short term developments then long term perspectives due to the very nature of climate! Having even some years that see a cooling is nothing a serious climate scientist would lead into questioning climate change in general. The science is solid and there is no reason to doubt it!

Sit down and think, go and sign the petition and then hope, cause if we stop hoping, we’ve lost!

Take care,

Strothi

wie viele von euch ja wissen, arbeite ich seit geraumer Zeit für Model G8 Germany e.V. Während ich noch im März als Umweltminister der Deutschen Delegation nach Mailand geflogen bin, leite ich seit ein paar Monaten nun das Ressort Gipfelbetreuung. Daher freut es mich umso mehr, endlich verkünden zu können, dass die Ausschreibung für die kommende Delegation nun endlich begonnen hat. Nachdem am Wochenende alle wichtigen Dokumente online gegangen sind, haben wir heute damit begonnen, die Ausschreibung über die diversen Verteiler zu jagen

Bevor ich jetzt hier groß rumlaber, um was es geht oder warum man sich eigentlich bewerben sollte, verweise ich euch doch besser auf unsere Seite, auf der das alles fein erklärt wird. Dort findet ihr dann nicht nur das Bewerbungsformular, sondern auch die FAQ, in der (hoffentlich) alle eure Fragen beantwortet werden

Deadline für die Bewerbung ist der 31.12.2009. Mailand war als Delegierter genial, der kommende Gipfel findet in Vancouver, Kanada statt und wird mit Sicherheit ebenso klasse. Also kann ich euch nur empfehlen: Bewerbt euch jetzt!

Und weg, euer Strothi