New Years

After Christmas I've visited Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Upsalla. Watched fireworks with friends.

Bambi

Yesterday I was at the Zurich train station. They have a huge Christmas tree in an indoor Christmas market. In the shop next to the tree I found compelling evidence that having money is orthogonal to having good taste.

Vacation

Yesterday I returned from a week-long vacation. I was first for the weekend visiting friends in Bonn, Germany and then for another week in Mariawald, Heimbach, Germany. I was staying in a 600 year old monastery occupied by Trappist monks and three novices.


The monastery is pretty remote. Actually for the last couple of kilometers I had to walk a rather steep and slightly muddy path trough the woods uphill because there was no bus and a taxi would have taken 1.5h to arrive. I still arrived a little late and very sweaty.


The place itself was very beautiful. The landscape, the rooms, everything was tidy and clean and in order. Food was simple but fresh and well prepared. There was no radio, no TV, no internet, no distractions.

Most impressive were the monks. They live a really strict and ascetic life. They get up at 4am to go to the cold church and pray for 1 hour (1.5 hours on Sundays). They chant Gregorian songs, they speak Psalms and traditional prayers in German and in Latin. Throughout the day they meet 7 times in the church for the hourly prayers. They eat no meat, sleep on straw, live in a very moderately heated place, have no possessions, never leave the monastery, spend most of the day in silence. Many of them are also rather old. The impressive thing is though that these monks are genuinely happy. They are cheerful, have warm and strong voices, they see a purpose in their efforts, know exactly what they are doing. Amazing.

Geld 2

"Banker streichen trotz Krise über 70 Milliarden ein
Zahlungen an der Wall-Street in keinem Verhältnis zum Wertverlust

[...] Die Papiere der Citigroup und von Goldman Sachs fielen um über 45 Prozent. Die Titel von Merrill Lynch und Morgan Stanley gingen sogar um über 60% in den Keller. Die bisherigen Gesamtbezüge der Morgan-Stanley-Mitarbeiter von fast 10,7 Mrd. Dollar seien zwischenzeitlich sogar höher als der Börsenwert des Unternehmens gewesen." [NZZ Online, 18. Oktober 2008]

Opera

Yesterday the Swiss television recorded the opera La Traviata in the Zurich train station. Singers sang on trains, in little train station bistros, in the large hall in the center. A major logistic effort. I saw at least three conductors at some point. Cameras everywhere. Nice crowd of spectators, some dressed like opera, stood patiently during the whole thing.

As an opera experience it was actually a failure: Most of the time you could hear either the singers or the orchestra. Also, the acoustics was really bad and unless you stood within a meter from the singer you couldn't actually hear very much. Except for the soprano whose voice worked well in the huge open space.




Still, at the end it became very clear to me why people invented opera houses.

Geld

"Die Realwirtschaft ist in Geiselhaft der Finanzwirtschaft und ihrer Habgier geraten und hat diese Gaunerei auszubaden." [Edgar Oehler, Chef des Thurgauer Bauausrüsters Arbonia Forster (AFG), NZZ, 29.09.08]

"Egoismus und Geldgier führen in die Katastrophe. Jetzt sind wir da." [Johann Schneider-Ammann, Präsident des Industrieverbands Swissmem, Chef der Langenthaler Maschinenbauerin Ammann Group, NZZ, ebd.]

"Gebt mir die Kontrolle über das Geld einer Nation und es kümmert mich nicht länger, wer dessen Gesetze macht." [Mayer Amselm Rothschild, 18th century]

Back

I'm back from a three week stay in California. It was work-related, so no pretty pictures from gorgeous vacation sites and beaches. I still had fun, work-wise and on the weekends.

During my stay I survived two Hurricanes on the other side of the country (on all channels: reporters outside, in the rain, fighting the storm, shouting in their microphones), a 4.0 earthquake in Oakland, and the American election coverage on the news. It was the time when McCain for the first time was leading the polls in front of Obama (check the Iowa election market for the most up-to-date, historically most accurate predictions). McCain picked a former beauty-queen as running mate and surprisingly gained popularity among young white males. Obama made a comment regarding putting lipstick on a pig and now the question whether he was sexist was top news for three days. I wonder how the Americans can stand their abysmally bad political news coverage until the election is over.

Regarding political activism: The LGBT group at my company invited a panel of gay/lesbian activists who were fighting Proposition 8. The proposition is about constitutionally banning gay and lesbian marriage in the state of California and there will be a vote on it in November. It turned out to be actually a fund raising event: The three panelists were highly professional campaigners and they argued entirely in terms of money: This is how much money the other side collected so far, this is how much we expect them to collect, this is how much we have, and here are the current polls. We need to be first with TV spots and the other side will have a prayer event with 40k participants which we need to counter. All about money. All about polls. No arguments.

Me eating a burger.	American eating a burger.

When driving in the States I always listen to talk radio on AM. Last year it was a right wing station that made fun or Hillary Clinton all day long. This year it happened to be immaculate heart radio, a catholic talk radio where you can mainly hear sermons against abortion and where you can call in with a question about catholic doctrine and get told the truth right away. Example: A female caller from Iowa was puzzled about the piece of scripture where Christ said on good Friday to the other guy on the cross they would be together in paradise by tomorrow. But on Saturday Christ was not yet risen? And would the other guy not have to go through purgatory? The host had the answer immediately (hint: the meaning of "paradise" changed over time) and the woman was happy again. Faith restored.

The impression you get from immaculate heart radio about catholicism in America is a bit similar to Germany in the 50s: In attack mode, with a very clear doctrine, quite political, anti-abortion, and anti-contraception, arguing a lot with scripture (probably protestant influence here), complete faith in the pope. I'm not sure how connected this world is with reality: I've been to a number of bookstores and scanned the philosophy/religion/psychology corners as well. The impression you get there is that, besides some degree of confusion (in one case I found Nitzsche in the "self-help and healing" section), actually the Asian religions and especially Buddhism are on the rise and occupy much space on the bookshelf.

Return to Switzerland was uneventful. (Probably a good thing on a plane.) I was greeted by cold 7deg Celsius and cloudy sky.