First day of summer

Summer arrived in Stuttgart while I was away. The chestnut trees are in full bloom, triggering an unusual allergic reaction: I have a dry, scratchy throat and eyes. The dandelions have been and gone, the roses are budding out. Toronto is at least three weeks behind us climatically, the magnolias were just starting and many trees were still bare.

I'm sitting in shorts and t-shirt in my summer office aka the balcony, having just eaten brunch out here (bacon and scrambled eggs with cheese and mushrooms), with a cup of coffee and a pair of telephones by my side. The temperature is somewhere in the high 20's, the sky is immaculate blue and there is a gentle breeze stirring the leaves of the trees in the schoolyard opposite.

Life is grand.

In geek news Microsoft announced last week that it has sold 2 million Zune MP3 players since the device was introduced in November 2006. Apple sold 10.6 million iPods last quarter. 'nuff said. source

In blogging news Dale is hitting a groove, writing well about the intersection between his beliefs and his massage practice. Quitting the cubicle was such a good move for him. He writes here about pain and self-control, here about poetry and meditation and his fifth blogday, here about maintenance and tennis balls, here about surrender:

I went to KCC last night. It was full of young people... It was nice to see them all there. Though I'm puzzled, as always, when young people come to the Dharma. How do they know, yet, that the world isn't going to make them happy? It makes so many promises. It's so beautiful, and so plausible. And it's so good at convincing us that our unhappiness is our own fault. If only I were twenty pounds lighter -- if only I weren't diffident -- if only I had enough resolution -- if only I did yoga every day -- if only I meditated every day -- if only I ran every day practiced the guitar every day went to the gym every day studied Italian every day read more demanding books learned to appreciate opera and Noh drama and Renaissance painting and memorized poetry and got out into the wilderness made more time for friends and understood quantum mechanics and stopped pressuring myself to do more things -- ah, then I would be happy.

and here about visitors to his massage practice:

If one more woman apologizes to me for being ten imaginary pounds overweight, I am going to scream.

1) You are not overweight
2) It would be no damn business of your massage therapist if you were
3) You are so beautiful that it makes my heart sing

Quite right. Go read.

Happy part two

So, where was I? Oh yes, happy.

I'm very pleased with Hamburg and my stay there. The city reminds me of London with all of its pleasant associations to my college years. And aside from that it is a very nice place in itself. The first thing one notices is that there are trees everywhere! Nearly every street is lined by mature trees (all exactly sixty years old, but that's another story); riding the bus or subway (mostly above-ground, often elevated on a viaduct) is like travelling through an inhabited park.

The near-omnipresence of water in Hamburg also appeals to me. Not just the Elbe and its enormous harbour complex, there is also a large lake, the Alster, in the middle of the city, fed by many broad, slow streams that are crossed and re-crossed by the elevated subways. And the waterways are used too: Ingrid and I sat outdoors at a waterside café for lunch last week, and counted three sightseeing boats and a half-dozen canoes and pedalos going past. Were I to move here, I'd definitely get a canoe and explore the water.

I told Ageing Yuppie my theory on the setting of the social tone in Hamburg; he thought for a moment then agreed with my analysis. It is a working city, a city of workers, and while it does have the small-c conservatism and mild anti-intellectualism that one associates with such places, it also has the active social conscience and the desire for order that one misses in cities like Berlin.

Interrupting myself for a moment, I am trainblogging again, writing in the train to Hamburg on a sunny and warm Sunday afternoon in late summer. I'm taking an earlier train than usual, which should get me there an hour or so before sunset. Perhaps I shall find a spot by the Alster and drink a beer or two there? I am debating spending the next two weekends here, or perhaps at the North Sea shore.

Immaculate blue sky, about 28° with a gentle breeze as we left Stuttgart; the forecast is for a whole week of the same. Woot. It's been six weeks since Siebenschläfer and the curse of bad weather has been lifted. The old wives' tales win again.

Signs of the times part N: from my seat, I can see seven laptop screens.

I am wearing my working glasses while typing this, obviously, but then I noticed that I was looking out of the window at the scenery while still wearing them. These glasses have changed my eyes! When I first got them I could barely see beyond two metres or so, my eyes wouldn't focus that far away while I had them on. Now I can focus adequately well off to the horizon through the uppermost 5mm or so. Amazing. (I can't see as well as with my normal long-distance glasses, and it is a strain to look far away; but it does actually work.)

To be honest, part of my happiness in Hamburg is due to Ingrid, who is a charming and attractive young woman; she's not classically beautiful, but she has a very interesting face and manner (and a marvellous body, with a very biteable arse). It's a pleasure to sit opposite her and surreptitiously watch her over the top of my monitor. We are alone in the office now (in our half of the office, to be pedantic: AY shares the space with a furniture-and-interior-design company) since the others have moved to the Speicherstadt as I mentioned to work on a different project. We are still in the old place because the tyrant client for the museum would be wounded in his godlike self-importance if he knew that his project were not the be-all and end-all of the office. He's the kind of arsehole client who will call up at 9:20 on a Saturday evening and fall into a screaming rage on hearing that the lazy worthless scum architects are not all in the office. Bah. Glad that we don't have anything to do with him or his project. Yet.

Sorry, I got sidetracked by scorn there. I was falling into a reverie about Ingrid. Pity that she's only about 28 or so; not exactly half my age but close enough that I hesitate. On the other hand, hesitating is my natural mode anyway, so what the hell. She lives in Altona, a western suburb of Hamburg that was once a separate town; it's near to the Elbe which has a beachlike sandy shore at that point. I discovered that the bus from the office to where I'm staying continues to the Altona train station, so we went home together on Thursday evening. I'd overheard her earlier on the phone with a male voice, cancelling a loose evening arrangement because she was tired; only after I'd said goodbye and left the bus did it occur to me that this might have been an excuse and that I should have invited her for a drink despite it.

It's odd, three months after the walk to Santiago de Compostela, I still find myself looking twice at people walking or cycling between the fields out here, wondering whether they are pilgrims. Talk about yer lasting impact.

The holiday spirit

Once again sitting on the balcony, drinking coffee and listening to the sounds of summer. The weather is warming up after a few days of cool rain; it's currently sunny and mid-twenties with a gentle breeze, which I find pretty close to ideal.

It's funny that when I'm away from the computers, I have many ideas about things that need blogging, but when I sit here nothing comes to mind—at least, nothing that I'm willing to write about yet. Apparently I have a higher impression of my thoughts when I am not able to set them down: walking around town my mind is full of clever, eloquent posts that only need to be typed out, but sitting here it all seems very scrappy and incomplete.

Anyway.

It occurs to me that I haven't been on a real walk, meaning more than the usual two to three km of a Saturday downtown shopping trip, since returning from Spain three weeks ago. I shall rectify this immediately if not sooner, by walking down to the river to enjoy the evening air. More later, perhaps.

Balcony blogging (2007 edition)

North American readers may wish to avert their eyes at this point. (Don't say I didn't warn you.)

I'm presently sitting on my balcony in shorts and a long-sleeved T-shirt, having just cleared away the dishes from lunch (which I ate out here for the first time this year (though I'd already eaten lunch outdoors per se twice)). Burton is on my lap and a selection of telephones, a book, a cup of tea and a packet of Baiocchi are by my side on the famous braunes Rolltablett aka the summer office.

It is 26°C; the birds are singing, the sky is again/still spotlessly blue; there is a gentle breeze from the north, and the howling of emergency-services sirens from the south nearly drowns out the continuous beeping of car burglar alarms from the west. Ah well, can't have everything. There should be a law enacted to permit people living within earshot of a continuously beeping, ignored, car alarm to smash the car's windows after say fifteen minutes. It's perfectly obvious that the car is not being stolen, and also that the owner is not here to do anything about it; why should we have to put up with this egregious imposition? Bah.

It's absurd that the temperature should be this high so early in the season. The trees in the schoolyard to the east (in my line of vision) haven't yet leaved out; how can it already be 26°? Last year at this time, the last snow had just melted. Call it "global warming" and call me worried that the less thoughtful members of society look around them and say "if this is GW, then let's have more of it," not thinking that warmer might mean different, and that different might become highly unpleasant.

Nonetheless: Life is wonderful.


In other news Thursday's Dilbert is filed under "wishful thinking."