Bloredom

I know I shouldn’t just post a YouTube video, but this video is just too unique.

[video removed]

“Coal grows in the ground or something.”
“Clean power is cheap power. – Wind power is crazy-looking.”

And hey, there was a guy in the comment section who summed it up quite well:

“I think this video is a great work. A good look at western civilization (in this video America) and how people don’t like to worry about the big problems because it’s too much thinking or they just want to make money.”

As one can see: I’m back in Trittenheim… ;)

… and Thomas Angelo will be back (probably not before 2008, but anyway). :)

I can’t believe that it’s been almost 5 years that I walked through Lost Heaven, equipped with my dark trenchcoat and my hat, slipping deeper and deeper into my misery to finally rise through the ranks of the Salieri ‘family’ and battling the competing Morello family, led by the sharply-dressed Don Morello. *Sigh*…

How do I deserve this? For me as a German student in Scotland, with (until recently) no intention of staying in Scotland after graduation, it has always been something of a guilt-ridden mystery why the Scottish executive would each year pick up the bill for my tuition at St Andrews University. But they do: each year I send a letter to a Scottish government agency to confirm that yes, I am still a full-time student St Andrews and yes, I am still a European citizen and yes, I want you to pay my tuition fee. It takes five minutes to do this, every year I submit it late, and yet every year it saves me some 2000€. If it wasn’t my own education, I’d say what a crackpot waste of taxpayers’ money.
Yet there is one catch: after graduation, every “home” student (i.e. Scottish and EU students) is asked to contribute to the graduate endowment, a one-off payment of around 3000€.
Until now, apparently. Just in time for my graduation in June 2008, the Scottish executive is intending to introduce legislation that would scrap that endowment.

“The Scottish government has announced plans to scrap the £2,000 fee paid by students after graduation.

Education Secretary Fiona Hyslop told the Scottish Parliament current and subsequent students would not have to pay the endowment.

She intends bringing forward draft legislation in the autumn, with the aim of the move coming into force by April.”

Big government to the rescue, I say!

Have you ever been to a country in which the nice guy at the reception strongly adviced you not to leave the hotel at 2 pm because of the heat (42 degree celsius) outside at the street?

(no, this was not a shop for air-conditioners. ALL of them were in operation to cool this one shop)

And for those who didn’t know: Qatar (or to be more precise: Doha, the capital of Qatar) is the home of probably one of the most famous TV stations “Al Jazeera“. Unfortunately they didn’t really let me come close to their buildings (damn it, I really wanted to have a picture of me in front of their home base) as the whole area was secured like a military outpost in war-times.

Oh, and btw: I really feel like a complete fool when I as a student, because of Germany’s great enviroment-saving policies, have to pay 50 Euros to fuel up my tiny Citroen, while all the Emirs here in Qatar fuel up their Audi Q7 3.0 for maybe 4,50 Euro:

(Price for one liter of fuel: 0,7 QR – 0,14 Euro;
Price for one liter of bottled water in a convenience store: 1.5 QR – 0,30 Euro)

Probably one of the best 5-day-trips since a very long time:

Taipei 101 – The city from above

Same shot as in Spiderman 2. ;)

No “bombing of fish”

And thanks for the wonderful evening and the extremely entertaining train-ride back home to Taipei… ;)

Tokyo, …, probably the only city that was not only destroyed quite often by earthquakes and typhoons but also by a huge saurian animal a.k.a. “Godzilla”. For that reason Tokyo’s founding fathers probably decided to build this strange animal a memorial, right in the middle of Tokyo’s main shopping road… :)

And yes, this is also Tokyo :)

Update:
And btw: I did it!!!! (Link 1; Link 2) :)