life

The girls would’nt wanna believe me when i said thats not the smell of weed. They thought that the entire town was getting high. It sure smelled like it, .. but from my experiences on the east coast i knew that the spraying of skunks smells almost just like it. When we went shopping last saturday we finally saw a dead skunk on the road so the girls would believe me after all.

One day I was playing basketball on the court just outside my door. We just finished a 4 on 4 game when suddenly a huge crowd came onto the court and wanted to start a tournament. It was to fraternity houses playing against each other.

On Wednesday we did a lot of reading for the upcoming class. I don’t like books and for some reason I was a lot quicker with the reading than the girls. Our instructor who does global economics is the coolest guy! We is into planes and all this. We owns a little plane himself. So he offered a “Discovery Flight” where students can actually fly a plane for 45 minutes for 80 bucks. Every single student in the class signed up. I like his class already. He tightly connects global economics to politics and other current stuff. A very interesting class!

 

It has been quite a party week for us.  After class we and some other germans drove down to a house party of four other german girls. We bought some beer and had to drive their with our bikes. I had some cans in the basket in front of my bike when i passed a cop car on a stop sign. Haha, … just smile and wave! Smile and wave. Boy i can tell you I almost shit my pants ;) Driving back was fun too ;)

On Thursday alot of reading again. No, .. its not just party all the time! Too bad that we had a quiz in that class that night. I still got like 6 out of 10 right. And those quizzes don’t really count anyways. After class we all went downtown because Thursday was a major partynight in Santa Barbara. We took Bills Bus. This is a bus which pics up students in Isla Vista for 10 bucks two ways. There is music on the bus and it allows students to drink. Pretty funny. The clubs in Santa Barbara were alright. Didn’t like the music very much. We went to Sandsbar and Eos. I lost all the other germans after the Eos so i took the bus home alone and went to Freeb!irds to have some Nachos. Yummy. I guess Freeb!irds are the best!

Although I watch craiglist every day I havent found cheap surfing equipment yet. I wann ago surfing so bad! Yesterday we rented the movie Hangover. Today was a rather lazy day. We did all of our grocery shopping. Its quite a pain in the butt to take the bus to Albertsons and carry all this heavy stuff back to the apartment.

And I also got another video for you guys. It keeps track of how long it takes me to go to the beach by bike ;) Enjoy

And you will understand when you see the pictures i took today. But let me start at the beginning of this beautiful day:

It started pretty bad with a cold shower. This freaking place dont have hot water i guess. Or it was just me, cuz when the girls got into the shower they had warm water. Whatever. After 2 minutes in the shower i managed to get a bed for 37 dollars from craigslist. Well, .. the bed got stains and smells pretty bad. But hey, .. what can you expect for that price. I got ready to take some pictures and to drive around Isla Vista just to get an impression of what this place is like. Well, .. look at the pictures and enjoy:

 

I drove around in my beach cruiser the entire day. All along the coast line and I met up with Fulya and Annika at the Lagoon. They were trying to figure out what to do with they courses, because they only have 12 out of 16 credit points they need. So they might have to take online classes from UCLA. Does not sound too bad to me. Maybe even the best choice, .. who knows. I also bought a sweatshirt in the bookstore which says “UCSB”. I like it very much.

At night we went to the Basketball game of the UCSB Gauchos. They played the opening game against the UC Davis and had a fantastic game, but see for yourself. We beat UC Davis by like 20 points in the end.

 

After the game we went back to our apartment where Fully and I decided to got to a pub where a german called Mattis invited us. We did not know that the pubs here close at 12h so we missed the party cuz we went out too late. We decided to see if the Del Playa Drive can life up to its reputation as the number one party street in IV. It exceeded our wildest dreams ;) Mattis hit us up at the cell and told us to come to 6525 Del Playa. We just walked into that house and partied with the germans we met. They had a balcony which was probably about 50 meters away from the ocean. The view was amazing. It was a big apartment with probably 10 rooms. The party was pretty crazy too. We went to what we later called “the spaceroom” just to see pretty crazy people laying around the room totally wasted. It was fun though. The music was good, … I had a very good time. The entire street was one big party. After Fully and I had a very good hot dog, we went home. It was a very cool day!

Well well, … here we go again. New problems, but let me start at the beginning. Today we got up and Paul hooked us up with some silverware and a WiFi router and also some bud light beers! That guy is awesome. Here are some pics of our new home:

 

We had to bring the rental car back and went to that second hand shop right next to it. We bought kitchen utensils for like 50 bucks. Everything from pans to plates to cups and so on. A guy from enterprise gave us a ride back to Isla Vista. Later we went to pick up our beachcruisers! We had to get some stuff fixed and the bikes are pretty rusty and old, .. but i love them and they will do their job. After we had a delicious pasta and salad which Fulya fixed us, we went to our first class “Managing employee benefit programs”. And here comes the problem: Apparently, there were no prerequisites for this class. But when we walked in and introduced us to the instructors they said that the prerequisites for this class are the “Fundamentals of Human Resource Management” and that we cannot take this class because we did not have this class. They also said that they turned down foreigners because last time some foreigners failed the class. And it obviously did not count that we took this class in germany. We will talk to our administrator tomorrow about this. We stayed until the end of class although we do not have a chance to get in their just to see that it is all very easy stuff which we all could do in the twinch of an eye. And we already paid 440$ for this.

After class was over we all were pretty pissed about the situation. We decided to go home and have Ben and Jerry’s. Unfortunately that did not solve the problem! Good night.

Monday

Lots and lots of problems. Major ones, minor ones, you know… problems. We managed to solve our biggest possible problem just today! After the Orientation day ended at 12h, Fulya, Annika and I had a big schedule on what to do next. (98% of the International students were from germany by the way). We have a super friendly supervisor called NJ and she helps us out where every she can. We signed up for classes at Ker Hall, we had our Student ID’s done at the University Center and after everything was done our search for a place to stay continued. We called some people who advertised on craigslist, we went to the community housing department, where Maya, a very nice girl, helped us out with our search. We came to a point where every one of us was pretty exhausted about finding a place. But finally, .. .there seemed to be light at the end of the tunnel. We called for a spot on Segovia Rd. The guy says that we could look at the place today, as long as we made it to his office in 25 minutes. So we jumped off of the computer at the community housing office, ran across the campus and drove to the office. 5 minutes before the office closed we came in and a friendly guy showed us the place. The girls immediately fell in love with the place as soon as we walked in. We told the guy that he should hold the place for the next day at 12h. We were all excited about the place because it is so near to the beach and to the campus as well. The restaurants and shopping street is also just one block away.. Here are some impressions taken with my cellphone camera, better pics will follow.

 

Tuesday

So we went to the office and signed the contract. Little did we know that the place did not accept credit cards. They wanted cash or checks. After lots of thinking we decided to each take the cash out of our account. We signed the contract and moved in immediately. The guy provided us with bar stuhls, chairs, a table, sandwhich maker, microwave and a TV. He also promised us a WiFi Router and some Bikes. Nice eh ?? We ordered a Pizza from Domino’s because we had to wait for a guy that had to fix our door lock. After that we went shopping for the rest of the stuff that you need to live in an apartment. The food shopping was the most fun obviously ;) We also managed to get Fulya a bed from an advertisement off craigslist. Annika and I bought air matresses for the first couple of night until we find something a little more confortable. We were all so exhausted at the end of the night. Tomorrow we will have our first day of class, .. which brings me to my schedule of classes. I had to pick three classes:

Tuesday -> Human Resource Development -> 18h – 21h

Wednesday -> Managing employee benefit programs -> 18h – 21h

Thursday -> Understanding the numbers for human resource professionals -> 18h – 21.20h

Los Angeles: Union Station: 03:41h

8 hours ago I was sitting in Boston waiting for the delayed plane to Los Angeles. Now I am at the Union Station in Downtown LA. Union Station? Why the heck am I there? Well, apparently you cannot rent a car without a drivers licence. And this is exactly what I forgot in germany. The day before I left germany I went to a club and I forgot to take my licence out of my jeans before I left my house to go to the airport. Its 3:48 in the morning. You could literally hear a needle drop. Nobody except for sleeping people are at this station right now. I haven’t eaten since 12 or 16 hours. I haven’t slept since 24 hours. And I do not want to go to sleep because those people here dont look too friendly. When I arrived at Herz they told me that I cant get a car unless I got my licence. So a nice Herz employee took me back to the airport and told me exactly what to do. I took a shuttle bus to the station I am at right now. The driver was very friendly but was talking weird stuff at times. I gave him a good tip though because he tried to help me too. So I now bought this ticket and the train will leave in like 4 hours… so long.

Goleta: Motel 6: 21:44h

So I arrived at approx. 11h in the morning in Goleta. In the meantime the girls managed to get a car and picked me up from the trainstation. I checked in at Motel 6 and after that we went to visit Isla Vista. I probably had the best Sandwich in a very long time at Silvergreens. Or it was so good because I haven’t eaten anything for like 20 hours. We drove around the campus area just to see how beautiful the whole area is. At 16h we had an appointment to watch an apartment. It was advertised as furnished but actually wasn’t so we did not take it. Same with another appartment we watched in IV later that evening. Tomorrow starts college with an orientation day and we still have no place to stay. I’ll watch some Family guy now. “There once was a boy who liked to suck his thumbs. His mother told him to stop, but he would’t. So his mother cut off his thumbs. Now he has no thumbs. Good night”

This is it. I am Sitting at Gate 33 at Boston Logan International Airport. I got free Wi-Fi access thanks to Google. Nathan and Jon Mark just dropped me off at the airport. I got some stuff done this morning. I went to the place where Deborah works just to realize that it was a Saturday afternoon. She mentioned that she doesnt work on the weekends :( So i didnt get to meet her again unfortunately. I brought back some Hollister clothes to the Providence place mall. I ordered sweatshirts and shirts in large and I looked like a german sausage in them… Just like Nathan said: ” I guess they want you to feel bad because you dont fit in their clothes.” I also had to exchange the rayban glasses which I ordered on the Internet because they were too small for me. Thats the problem with online orders.

Right now, i am freakishly nervous about going to Santa Barbara. The flight takes off in like 2 hours and I have the most uncertain future whatsoever. I just talked to Philip on StudiVZ and told him that I am about to go one of the biggest cities in the world. Rent a car at 12h at night. Drive up the west coast to Santa Barbara and meet the girls at motel 6. I did not make any reservations at all. We did not even find an apartment yet. I don’t know where I All I got is me, my ipod and my macbook ;) And my parents credit card of course ;) and some dirty underwear.

I think I have never been this nervous in my entire life !

Lets have a quick revision on my time here in RI visiting my buddies Nathan and Scott: I had a very nice christmas eve at Mrs. Lemlers house ( Nathan’s Mum ) They had a huge family get-together. A lot of people i recognised from my past visits, but also a lot of new faces. On Christmas day we went to Mrs. Lemlers house again because we still had to open the presents. In America the kids get to open their presents on the 25th, .. not like in Germany.

One day I went to visit the Perry’s. All of them were there. They even got a new dog! Sugar still recognised me when I walked in the door. She sat on my lap a long time. The boys got so tall, unbelievable! Steve is 1,90 or 1,95. Even Matthew, wo was 7 or 8 when i came here in 2002 was very tall. Steve told me about some crazy stories of Charly. ;)

On that same night our french class form 2002 was getting together downtown Newport to have a drink or two. They get together every year aroun that time and since I was there I was able to go too. Nobody knew though and only a few people recognised me right away. I met up with Tim Grimes and my studdy buddy! Was nice to see Mrs. Milone again. She did not change a single bit :)

 

One night Scott and Nate took me out to a little Pub near their house called “PJ’s”. I had like 5 Wodka-Redbulls and we all got a “little” drunk that night. Nathan was diggin one of the dancers in the pub and he bought a shot for her at the bar. Unfortunately she gave him a fake number… might take a while for him to get over that ;) Just kiddin.. It was a very funny night!

I have a new favorite restaurant in RI. Its called Smokey Bones and Nate took me there one night. I had the most expensive dinner for the time I was here. The Babey-Back-Ribs were so good though! And 30 bucks for that aint so bad either !

We also went to see Mike at the bowling alley at the navy base! I suck at bowling. Although I hit a strike when it counted. Nathan and Brandon were pretty good at it. They can do that whole spinning and stuff.

I bought some really nice leather chucks for only 65 bucks. In germany they would have cost over 120 dollars at least. I must admit I gained a couple of pounds already… well, how can you not gain wait with all those delicious fast food restaurants around ;)

New Years was pretty crazy this year. We started out at Brandons house. I was getting pretty sick at DJ Hero on the playstation3. When we left at 9 o clock to go to the club District. T I was already pretty intoxicated ;) The club had an open bar from 9 to 11. Well, … open bar actually meant beer and coke. And they said they were out of coke by 10 o clock. I ordered my wodka-redbulls anyways and thought of the 20 bucks as an entrance fee. Josh got pretty intoxicated after like 10 seconds after we entered the club ;) We were 22 people in total and without us, .. that club would have been pretty empty! Nates friend Duce was making out with a girl, or should I say she was making out with him? Anyways, he got in trouble with her brother. I stepped up to them and busted a pose on them. The guy starts pushing me like a little girl. Haha. I was on the dancefloor for the entire night. Although the music was not really my favorite I had a really good time. Got pretty drunk by the end.. I had a blast!

 

We also went snowboarding again yesterday. We had a pretty big group of about 10 people going. Watch the video further down!

Okay, … I better be leaving now. My flight to Los Angeles takes off in a couple of minutes. They start boarding already. I am sooooo nervous right now. Weird feeling when you go somewhere and you do not know where you a sleeping for the next 6 months :)

In the end I would like to say that I met some cool new people like Jon Mark or Duce and although I wasn’t hanging out with them alot I will miss them when I leave. But also my old buddies like Brandon, Mike and Josh and all those others who I forgot to mention right now I will miss alot. Thanks to Scott and Nathan, who hosted the “very destructive german” for the last 18 days. Thanks to Mrs. Lemler for the christmas presents and that I made it on the fridge! Thanks to all of you guys!

I would like to end this revision with some quotes I gathered throughout those 18 days:

“Get off the fucking couch” – Scott

“Max, Do you have american money”? – Scott (after I broke the couch)

“Smells like german in here” – Nate

“We beat you at world war II” – Nate (in front of his entire family)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1M9VGxJecU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5LtaQQuBRU

Aight, … here we go again with a big update. Lots of funny stuff happened.

First off, the airmatress I’m laying on right now is mad comfy! I have to get one of those when I go down to california. I’ve been eating a lot of Fast Food since I’ve been here. Subways, Mc D., Wendy, BK and all those other places that we dont even know about in Germany. I feel like I need to eat a decent salad or 3 apples or something. I probably gained weight already. But the food is good. I had a huge Western Burger at Danny’s yesterday and I just gulped it down.

I dont know why but it seems like I am very destrucitve since i’ve been here. Nate and I accidentially broke the couch, … then I scratched the roof of Nates car. I’ll upload that video in a second so u guys can see.

I went into the abercrombie and hollister store in Providence Place Mall but I had to tell Nate to get me outta there quickly before I end up buying the entire shop. I pretty much broke right now. Hopefully my pay check is coming in before I go to cali. At the Game Stop store I met Shane Parker who was in my math class with Mr. Burns. He recognized me right away although it has been like 7 years since he last saw me.

Because of the strong Euro everything is soooo cheap over here. Take Subways for example. In Germany you pay about 7 euro for a meal which is about 9 dollars. Here i paid 5,90 for a BLT with a drink and chips. The clothes are mad cheap too. Take Abercrombie, Scott said: “Wow, 50 bucks for pants is mad expensive.” And i was like, in Germany this is actually considered very cheap.

I have to be very careful with the money though. Right now I haven’t spend it on anything that is not food. One night we watched the movie “Hangover” on DVD which was mad funny because Scott mixed us some drinks and he put very much alcohol in it too. So he was laughing the whole time. The movies is nice too.

One night, Scott, Brandon and Mike had a Flag Football game. It basically is like real football but you dont tackle the guys. Instead you pull the flag they got on some sort of belt. They actually won the game. They all did pretty well. Ryan was on the team too. Scott had some good catches.

The other night we were playing beer pong at Brandons house. He didnt put the heat on yet so it was freezing inside his house. I wasn’t very good at beer pong but it was my first time playing that game. Nate and Mike were on fire that night. the Domino’s Pizza was good too. They had this breakstick crust on the side. Yummy.

On Saturday night we had huge snow coming to Cranston. When Nate and I woke up we had about 1 1/2 feet of snow here. Which is about 40 cm in Germany. Fortunately Scott has an All-Wheel-Drive Truck so we could get around. Nates Mustang doesn’t do very good in the snow I guess.

Scott is a manager of 2 Dunkin Donuts stores. So one day he came in at like 10 in the morning. And he asked me if i could help him shoveling the snow off of one of his stores. So we went out and shovelled and shovelled and shovelled.

Last night we went snowboarding in Wachusett. It was mad fun. I liked the mountain. We had a very good time there. I was racing Scott down the mountain and we saw a kid falling so we went around the kid like in an action movie. Must have looked pretty awesome too! I wanna go there again!

Aight, .. thats it for now. Here are some pics. ;)

 

The Journey Begins and from now on I am writing my entire entries in english so everybody can understand what I am talking about. I may change it to german though. Depending on the reading skills of my friends back home…

Well, Right now I am writing from Gate C16 in Frankfurt. 7 hours ago I was having couple of wodka-redbulls partying with my friends. At 4 a friend drove me home and i took a shower. Right after that I threw my luggage in the back of the touareg and my dad and I were off to Frankfurt. We picked up Philip along because he wanted to come with me to the airport.

After the check-in and a rather expensive breakfast i said goodbye to my dad and philip. At the security check I realised that Axel Schulz stood right behind me. And he wore that ugly “Fackelmann” hat too ;)

I sat in the very back of the plane. Right next to a girl who had a cold and was sneezing and coughing and snuffling the ENTIRE FLIGHT !! I had daydreams about choking her ! Kinda like those Flashbacks from Scrubs…

After 4 hours into the flight I realised that i was not drunk anymore :) I barely slept on the plane, .. but those 10 minutes I did, they gave out the food and I didn’t get it. No Chicken nor beef for Mr. Langholz. After the border protection in Boston, where we didn’t have the drug dogs this time, I went outside to see Nate and Scott. They both were waiting for quite a time and watched the football game. We visited Scotts parents on our way back from Boston too. They have a nice apartment with a pool table and big screen TV’s in like all the three rooms :) and a pool table in the living room. Everything is very nice. I sleep on the most comfortable air matress I have ever slept on! Scott and Nathan are @ work at the moment… And i finally have time for a lot of stuff that I wanted to do ever since I started my bachelor thesis! Max is free again !

 

“Introducing” ist eine Kategorie, in der ich monatlich etwas vorstellen möchte, an dem mir etwas liegt. Ich schreibe sozusagen ein kleines Referat über die Dinge, damit sie mir auch in hohem Alter noch erhalten bleiben und ich mich an sie erinnern kann. Ich versuche an jedem 11ten des Monats um genau 00:00h eine neue Folge herauszubringen. In dieser vierten Folge von “Introducing” will ich Tommy vorstellen.

Wenn Gott einen Hund mißt zieht er ein Band um das Herz, statt um den Kopf.

Unser Tommyboi, n toller Kerl. Wir haben Tommy vor fast genau 10 Jahren bekommen. Wir sind damals alle zusammen zum Züchter gefahren und haben uns ein paar Labradore angeschaut. Tommy war der kleinste unter seinen Geschwistern. Er war trotzdem der erste an den Gitterstangen. Nachdem wir uns für Tommy entschieden haben, hat uns der Züchter noch ein paar Tips gegeben und uns gesagt, dass Tommy (damals noch ohne Namen) ein T-Wurf ist. Wir sollten uns also einen Namen mit T am Anfang ausdenken. Der erste Vorschlag kam von mir. Ich wollte ihn Tommy nennen. Alle waren sofort einverstanden.

Auf dem Weg nach Hause hat Mama den kleinen Tommy im Auto im Fußraum gehabt. Er war total ängstlich. Zuhause wollte er auch nicht rein gehen und ist aufgeregt hin und her gelaufen. Sein Hundehaus hat er bis heute nicht betreten. Immer wenn er etwas falsch gemacht hat sagte Papa: “Ist das denn die Möglichkeit?” Nur dann hat Tommy gehört. Auf alles andere hat er nur selten reagiert.

Spazieren gehen mit Tommy war anfangs immer ein Abenteuer. Er hat Mäuse gefangen, ist hinter Steinen hinter und zog an der Leine bis zum geht nicht mehr. Die Leidenschaft zu Steinen hat Tommy bis heute nicht verloren. Er trägt sie eine weile, lässt sie fallen wenn er einen besseren Stein gefunden hat, legt sie auf die Wiese und legt sich drauf. In der vollen Extase welzt er sich darauf herum und bellt. Ich glaube in diesem Moment kann er garnicht glücklicher sein. Das ist das größte. Wenn ich einen Stein unter dem Schuh verstecke, haut er meinen Fuß mit seiner Schnauze zur Seite als würde sein Leben davon abhängen. Immer wenn wir oben bei Schneiders angekommen waren schaut er mich an. Er weiß, dass es da oben immer Steine gibt, die ich ihm werfe. Ich lasse ihn dann immer erst an dem Stein riechen und werfe ihn. Egal wo ich den Stein hinwerfe, Tommy findet genau diesen Stein zurück. Ob in einem Haufen von Steinen oder im hohen Graß.Auch wenn ich sage “Komm Tommy, wir gehen wieder”, weiß er, dass ich zur Entschädigung einen Stein schmeiße.  Wenn ich das mal nicht tun sollte, bellt er mich an solange bis ichs mache.

Seit seine Atrose so schlimm geworden ist, kann Tommy nicht mehr so gut laufen. Auf dem Hinweg ist er schnell, aber sobald wir im Feld umdrehen wird er ein wenig träge. Seit dem wir ihm im Sommer geschoren haben geht das aber. Ich glaube das Scheren hat ihm seinen zweiten Sommer beschert. Er läuft seit diesem Sommer wieder ganz gut für seine 10 Jahre.

Zuhause war Tommy früher sehr aktiv. In den letzten Jahren ist er aber sehr lustlos geworden. Ab und zu holt er sich eigenständig ein Spielzeug aus dem Korb und dann sag ich “gib mir das! Schon einige Kuscheltiere haben den Kampf gegen Tommyhund verloren. Dann fehlen Augen und Ohren, die sich Tommy schon einverleibt hat.

Hier ein paar Bilder vom Lieblingshund.

 

Sehr geehrte Frau Merkel,

mein Name ist Max Langholz und ich studiere im Studiengang Handelsmanagement.  Zu diesem Zeitpunkt recherchiere ich für meine Bachelorarbeit mit dem Thema „Made in Germany aus Kundensicht“.  Um diese Frage zu lösen muss ich darauf eingehen, was mit diesem impliziten Versprechen wahrgenommen wird, welche Erwartungen die Kunden an dieses Siegel haben und welche Eigenschaften das Siegel ausmacht.
Ich schreibe Sie an, weil ich verzweifelt und verwundert darüber bin, dass es zu diesem Thema so wenig Material gibt. Zahlreiche Marktforschungsinstitute, Unternehmensberatungen und das Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft konnten mir bislang keine brauchbaren Materialien zur Verfügung stellen, die mich in meiner Arbeit unterstützen konnten. Wer kann mir sonst noch helfen wenn nicht Sie? Abgabetermin ist der 26.11.09. Über Material welches ich in meine Arbeit einbringen kann freue ich mich sehr. Gerne bin ich bereit Ihnen meine Bachelorarbeit nach Vollendung zur Verfügung zu stellen.

Viele Grüße
Max Langholz

Update: Und hier die enttäuschende Antwort, die noch nicht einmal von meiner Bundeskanzlerin selber kommt.

Sehr geehrter Herr Langholz,

das Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung ist grundsätzlich gerne bereit, Informationen für die Erstellung von Referaten, Diplomarbeiten, Examensarbeiten, Dissertationen und ähnlichen wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten zur Verfügung zu stellen. Diese müssen jedoch auf verfügbare Materialien begrenzt werden, wie z.B. Presseerklärungen und Broschüren. Recherchen oder Antworten auf umfangreiche wissenschaftliche Fragen können nicht geleistet werden. Bitte haben Sie dafür Verständnis.

Sofern Sie über einen Internet-Anschluss verfügen, empfehle ich Ihnen unsere Web-Adresse: www.bundesregierung.de, unter der Sie Aktuelles zur Politik der Bundesregierung erfahren können.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Im Auftrag
E. Wok  (Name geändert)