30.3.02024

Post photo: Time change | © Pixabay

Grilling

My grill was turned on late than ever before. Whether this is due to pure convenience or my increasing age remains to be seen. It's pleasing that there were no complications, which speaks for the grill after all these years.

The reason for the barbecue was a meeting of German-Africans; I've probably been a member there for 14 years now. As already mentioned in the blog, my membership is a direct result of my job, which is clearly one of the more pleasant ones.

And so the evening was a successful start to the barbecue season - the Saxons among us will soon disabuse me and point out that they barbecue all year round; which now makes me revel in very refreshing barbecue evenings in the snow.

At today's barbecue I was able to brush up on my French skills and, for the first time, follow a conversation in Ewe, a Gbe language, for a longer period of time. Incidentally, Ewe only became a written language during the German colonial period.

Summertime

The usual half-yearly excitement is just around the corner again, the change of all clocks, including the internal clocks, to the unspeakable and completely useless summer time. Last time I did in autumn 2020 written about it in a little more detail, at a time when there was still hope that our representatives would at least be able to implement the abolition of this useless and expensive matter - they had already decided to do so. But they have probably completely forgotten that we only have new laws or the abolition of outdated laws if our legislature itself can make something of it.

All of us, and especially our representatives, should be aware that if you want to earn money, you have to look for the best and most demanding job possible! Serving as a representative of the people is a purely voluntary position, which unfortunately has long been reduced to absurdity with all the diets and other benefits!

And even then, far too many MPs are only looking at how they can get more money. That's why functioning legislation will probably only be successful if our MPs, like professional footballers, also receive a bonus per goal (law). And so you could do a calculation: What will we save at the end of summer time? We pass these savings on to our representatives - as a “gate bonus”, so to speak.

Addendum 31.3.2024

In Chris Kurbjuhns net corner can be read today: “It is by no means the job of politicians to 'steer criticism of themselves in the right direction'. It is the task of politicians to endure this criticism, evaluate it and, if justified, use it to do a better job in the future.”

miscellany

Yesterday I received a pleasant email, “from the past” so to speak, as the last meeting must have been at least twenty years ago. The introduction that the writer chose is hard to beat: “I was on your website again, a lot of it speaks to my heart.” In any case, we have now arranged to have dinner together - the exciting thing is that this is in a small town in the neighborhood where my soon-to-be counterpart is probably traveling on business. And as luck would have it, I'll be there again soon - the last time was probably as an intern.

I also arranged to meet yesterday Herbert Burkhardtto re-stack election posters, banners and brochures this morning. There Michael Kuhn was also included, things happened quicker than feared. Which was just right for me since I still have to get my grill ready for use this evening - a little late, but better than never.

And because I was already on my server, I immediately started setting up a web shop - out of pure curiosity, because I would like to see how payment and billing works now; There have been some very positive developments in this regard over the last few decades. But since I don't have much opportunity for crafting at the moment and it's more of a night and fog thing - in the truest sense of the word - it will take quite a while. Maybe by then I'll have found my own use for such a webshop.

Yesterday's service in Kilian's Church was very pleasing, because... Bach Choir under the direction of Agnes Karasek I was pleasantly surprised, even though the conductor stepped in at very short notice.

The highlight of yesterday was a triple! Over the course of the day, I won three times at Settlers of Catan, which didn't particularly please my fellow players. But once it runs, it just runs.

---