Life in China | Dominik Mayer – Products, Asia, Productivity

Today is the first day of intermediate exams for the freshmen. They have to pass five exams now, starting with Technical Electricity, and another six next year.

Good luck to all of you!

A burglar stole things from a friend, I got the results of an exam that were not as desired, what’s coming next?

I’m almost the only one not studying abroad (yet) or doing an internship there but I’m the only one keeping the others posted about what’s going on, or at least I’m trying to. And what’s coming back? Some news from Stockholm and Cambridge, hardly any from Gran Canaria and none from the States.

With Max Emanuel, located near the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, I got to know another [beer garden](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer garden) today. Unfortunately, it wasn’t warm enough to sit outside. The interior is nice as well, but hm, it’s not a beer garden so I’ll definitely return in summer 2009.

I just told a Chinese friend that I started blogging but she couldn’t open the page. Google found out why. Wordpress.com, where this blog is hosted, is blocked in China what might become a problem when studying there…

A friend wants to see all my images. There are about 8.000 in my flickr account. Right now we’re on page 363 of 444. We should be done in about an hour… or two… or more…

1. Only cool people fly from the USA to Germany for one weekend.
2. It’s even cooler if they only do it because they want to write an exam here.
3. Wales has a national football team, Bavaria does not.
4. The tin foil in a Hookah must not touch the tobacco.
5. There are mint flavored Hookahs.
6. The first subway from StuSta leaves at 04:18.
7. The Allianz Arena is lit up at that time.
8. There are in fact people who are willing to come to the Volksfest in Freising.
9. Americans speak better English than I do.
10. Foreigners are not allowed to teach children under eight years in Taiwan.
11. 05:16 is either very late or very early.

The Chinese course I attended last year used the book Chinesisch für Deutsche (Chinese for Germans). The problem is that it doesn’t contain information on how to write Chinese characters at all. You have to figure it out by yourself. And the first dialogs are about mother, father, cat, dog and the fact that some students learn while others have a break. Not the kind of vocabulary that I suppose is most needed during the first days in Shanghai.

So I think about getting a new book. ChinesePod is going to cover Integrated Chinese throughout the next semester. I also read about the New Practical Chinese Reader which is prefered by some reviewers. How on earth should I know which one is better?

Deutschland. Ein Sommermärchen (Germany. A summer’s tale) was on TV today. I hadn’t seen it before and it strongly reminded me of the great ambience in summer 2006.

Almost ten years have passed since I’ve first seen the fabulous musical Elisabeth on a cold november evening at the Theater an der Wien. I’ve listened to the live recordings ever since and finally decided to buy the DVD. Some texts differ from the version I’m used to and I even discovered some new songs they must have included in the meantime. I haven’t heard that one before:

I personally prefer Uwe Kröger as Death, who duets with Japanese singer Maki Ichiro in this video where they’re singing in different languages for most of the time:

Update: There’s another great version of Pia Douwes and Uwe Kröger.

According to an article on the German news site Spiegel Online, the Second Legal State Examination is one of the hardest exams worldwide:

Denn das zweite juristische Staatsexamen gilt als eine der schwierigsten Prüfungen der Welt. Gut jeder fünfte Referendar scheitert im ersten Anlauf.

The Second Legal State Examination is reckoned one of the most difficult exams worldwide. Almost every fifth trainee fails at the first attempt.

Every fifth, ok, so 80 percent pass. I think many candidates here would be highly pleased with that quota.

Lenovo Worldwide Competitive Analyst Matt Kohut published two interesting posts on his blog. He first wants to figure out if and why people would want Linux on a ThinkPad and asks for the prefered distribution in the follow up.

I can’t say I’m unhappy that Ubuntu is leading the field with 47 % of all votes. The chances increase that they will offer a laptop as desired.

I finally decided to get the books of the New Approaches To Learning Chinese series: Intensive Spoken Chinese, The Most Common Chinese Radicals and Rapid Literacy in Chinese. The reviews are quite promising and the method convinced me. As the books are already sent, I hope they’ll arrive tomorrow.

Today was the third intermediate exam, Materials Science. There are only two left. Keep up, you’ll make it!

I should be in Cham by now as taking pictures for the family album is more important than two exams next week… Anyway, I’ll head for the University Library first, the TribüHne second and finally the State Library. I can still drive home when it closes at midnight. Positive side-effect: There won’t be any trucks on the roads.