Leah in Germany - 12 Jan 2001
I ate a moose for lunch today. How much better can life get? (Correction, this is what Marc thought I ate, but it turns out it was just a deer. A moose would have been more
exciting).
This morning I woke up. What a novel concept that was. After this, I went to the office. I stopped on the way to the office to buy lots of junk food. Somehow it does not seem
right to be working at SuSE without some crap to eat. I also got a nice croissant with some brown sugar and nuts in it. I had some nice coffee and cigarettes with Marc and
Edith at the office.
I have begun to notice that it seems Germans really like privacy, much more than in the US. For example, all of the public restrooms that I have seen have had either separate
little rooms for stalls, or almost floor to ceiling doors. On the other hand, all of the offices on the third floor of the office (really, by US standards, the fourth floor) are glass
walled. We were all trying to figure out today what would happen if people wanted to have sex on the desk in the office? This happens in all companies, but what about the ones
with glass-walled offices? With the population of geeks here, there would probably be one of 3 reactions (according to Edith) from people walking by. Some people would walk
by, have a quick look, get flustered, and pretend they didn't see it. Some people would walk by, have a look, and continue standing there, mouth gaping open. And lastly, some
people would walk by, have a look, and run off to tell everyone else to come watch.
The rest of the day was fairly normal, except for the "moose eating". I had some nice wheat bier at lunch. I met Matthias Fruehauf, one of the PPC support guys with whom I am
in much contact with. He told me to come smoke, in IRC, and thus I did. Later we discussed the new and exciting ways that MacOS 9.1 has broken the os-chooser script for
yaboot.
Olaf left to go to a wild party with his Grandma, leaving me to my own devices. I hacked around doing documentation and crap. As the evening progressed, some of the guys decided it was time to have a wild Friday evening SuSE style, by playing a bunch of Irish jig music very loudly. I was invited to order pizza, so Marc and I ordered some pizza, so we could have something to eat before heading off the the discotek. Of course, it occured to me that I had nothing to wear the the diskothek, so after ordering the pizza, I dragged poor Marc all over the city in search of something interesting to wear. I ended up with a really fuzzy pink and black sweater, and a nice wool skirt. By the time we got back, all of the pizza we had ordered was completely gone. Que sera . . .
Finally we left, and headed off to the company flat, so I could change. I did so, and then we hurried to meet Mario (Marc's friend, who also stopped by Oakland a couple times.) Mario is fortunate enough to live in the much fabled "red-light" district". We got to Mario's place, and I played with his big fat German cat for a little bit . . . The cat seemed to enjoy sinking it's claws into people. After much fun with the large German kitty, we headed off into the night.
We arrived at one of the biggest diskothek's I have ever seen in my life. We had a lot of fun drinking bier and not dancing. Well, that isn't entirely true, I went out and did some dancing, but Marc and Mario were too afraid of embarissing themselves. I think Mario must have remembered how much I was capable of drinking from the first time he was in the US, because he kept ordering four biers every time. Two for me, and one for him and Marc. I wasn't complaining, and I kept up quite nicely, I think.