In 2008, my girlfriend of that time (coincidentally my wife at the moment) and I decided to go on a little adventure of our own. We bought two Interrail tickets and vowed to see as much of Europe as humanly possible within the next four weeks. It was a disaster. The good kind. A disaster I will tell my children about, like “In 2008 I almost killed your mother by accident, by trying to catch a train. And then again by catching a wave with my body board! Oh, fun times…”
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You might have noticed the lack of new content here (all three of you). It is not the usual loss of interest that comes so often after the initial rush of writing your own blog has faded. It’s because I had to leave the US of A on a pretty short notice. Like a four-day-notice. Contradictory to popular belief I wasn’t kicked out by the authorities after they have found about my “secret hobby”*. I got sick, my condition worsened and I wanted to get home to receive the treatment I needed, in the environment that I felt comfortable in. Besides that, as I mentioned here, I didn’t want to single-handedly bring down my insurance company with outrageous bills. It’s been a couple of very rough months, not only for me but also for the people around me. Some folks claim it’s because of Saturn being in the house of Ariel the Mermaid or something but I don’t believe in that sort of stuff. Also, Nasa has declined my wish to nuke that f*cker. So there is that.
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It’s time to dwell into what I consider to be two of the most (de)pressing issues of the American system: Health care and food. Let’s start with the latter. Food plays a big role in the American way of life, that turns rapidly into the American waddle of life when staple foods shift from wheat and water to burger and soda. With the introduction of high-fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners and fat-free products the portion of the population in the US that is overweight or obese has spiked (here is a good talk about that). Since I’m not a nutrition expert, I don’t want to go too deep into that, but I may have some ideas that I would like to propose.
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I don’t know how he did it, but my advisor Daniel somehow tricked me into going to a real night club in the San Francisco Mission District. I haven’t been clubbing in ages which primarily has something to do with my age, but also with my somewhat twisted taste in music (see my playlists). Still, he got me to pay $20 for admission, which I found vastly overpriced until I realized that we had stumbled into the “Monster Drag Show” and a two meter tall queen was just about to sodomize a leather slave while singing “Wrecking Ball” by Miley Cyrus. I cried tears of joy. Daniel cried too, but that was because he spent another $20 on two (!) cups of beer. But after the first sips of tear flavored beer we were both dancing to what I assume was a mash-up of Michael Jackson and Katy Perry, thoroughly enjoying ourselves. As the evening progressed I remembered why I didn’t go clubbing as often as I did when I was younger.
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I think the US exhibits capitalism in a very troubling form. For instance, competitive marketing has become the only kind of advertisement there is. It’s like watching children arguing about whose father is the strongest, while you already know both fathers haven’t seen the inside of a gym for a very long time. Maybe the comparison between children and advertisements is not ideal. Advertisements are more like politicians. They will go to great lengths to not tell you the true cost of what they are trying to sell you. The car is only $399 a month (if you pay $5999 in advance, by purchasing the in-house insurance and excluding tax). For example, T-Mobile made their pay-as-you-go model ridiculously hard to understand.
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There may be something wrong in a society where an SUV — a vehicle to conquer almost any kind of terrain for the cost of many gallons of gas — is the predominant car in the suburbs. Sure, there are some hills here. But none of them justify a four-wheel drive and man-sized tires. The names speak volumes themselves: If it’s not “suburban” it’s “patriot”. And if you are a patriot in the suburban, you’d better own both of them.
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That headline should have got me some attention. And some hatred. Not only do San Franciscians cringe when they hear the name “Frisco” but they also loathe the tech industry which they blame for rising rents and the loss of the original vibe of their beloved city. There is some controversy about how much can really be attributed to the rise of the tech industry in SF and how much is just inevitable in an attractive city that refuses to grow vertically and cannot grow horizontally. But I am neither a worker for the tech industry nor am I moving to SF. I am a visiting student researcher living in Berkeley and I apologize for the misleading headline.
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Down on the West Coast, they got their icons
The silver starlets, their queens of Saigon’s

Ever since it was confirmed that I could write my master thesis at the UC Berkeley I have been living in a state of excitement and sheer terror. I dread Sunday because it means parting ways from my loved ones for six long months. Still I’m sitting on packed bags, waiting for Sunday to finally come. This playlist reflects this mood: I’m ready, but I’m scared.