Berlin ist ein Gedicht (Berlin is a Poem)

I bought this book in 2002 when I was living in Berlin and never really took much time to read it. Berlin ist ein Gedicht means "Berlin is a poem." I saw it in a bookstore in Prenzlauer Berg near Kollwitzplatz and loved the cover.

In case you're not familiar with Berlin, the city's coat of arms is on the right.

Note: The "Ber" part of Berlin is pronounced in German very much like the German word for bear (baer - similar to the English). It is not pronounced "burr," as English speakers often say it.

Anyway, Berlin is probably my favorite city in the world (that I've been to, at least). I had bought this book for the girl I was dating at the time but loved the idea of Berlin as a poem so much (and the cover!), that I went back to the bookstore and picked up a copy for myself.

Below is a poem I thought was pretty good.



Berlin in Zahlen
by Erich Kaestner

Lasst uns Berlin statistisch erfassen!
Berlin ist eine ausfuehrliche Stadt,
die 190 Krankenkassen
und 916 ha Friedhoefe hat.

53 000 Berliner sterben im Jahr,
und nur 43 000 kommen zur Welt.
Die Differenz bringt der Stadt aber keine Gefahr,
weil sie 60 000 Berliner durch Zuzug erhaelt.
Hurra!

Berlin besitzt ziemlich 900 Bruecken
und verbraucht an Fleisch 303 000 000 Kilogramm.
Berlin hat pro Jahr rund 40 Morde, die gluecken.
Und seine breiteste Strasse heisst Kurfuerstendamm.

Berlin had jaehrlich 27 600 Unfaelle.
Und 57 600 Bewohner verlassen Kirche und Glauben.
Berlin hat 600 Konkurse, reelle und unreelle,
und 700 000 Huehner, Gaense und Tauben.
Halleluja!

Berlin hat 20 100 Schank- und Gaststaetten,
6300 Aerzte und 8400 Damenschneider
und 117 000 Familien, die gern eine Wohnung haetten.
Aber sie haben keine. Leider.

Ob sich das Lesen solcher Zahlen auch lohnt?
Oder ob sie nicht aufschlussreich sind und nur scheinen?
Berlin wird von 4 1/2 000 000 Menschen bewohnt
und nur, laut Statistik, von 32 600 Schweinen.
Wie meinen?

Coffee

I spilled coffee all over my desk at work last Monday. It didn't get on the computer, or the phone, just all over the desk and my keys.

My two flash drives were attached to my key chain... containing almost all of my design files and work-related materials, including grant files.

The computer specialist for our department told me to rinse the drives off well, and put them in a safe place to dry for a week.

I just tested them. All of the files are still there. I'm currently copying them onto my hard drive at home just in case.

Some Ridiculous Things, Part II

Bureaucracy
My place of employment has incredible bureaucracy. Paperwork galore, fine print like nobody's business. It's taken months and months to get paychecks. One of my grad students had to wait 105 days for a $200 reimbursement check, which probably ended up costing the university so much more than that with all of the staff time that was wasted on it.

Friday was the cut-off day for submitting payroll for the Feb. 1-15 time period. I have a weird job and am 0.9 FTE - i.e. 90% of full-time. I use the remaining 10% to do freelance graphic design (and sometimes web) for my department on random projects.

This means that I have my salaried time sheet, which is submitted monthly, and an "auxiliary" hourly time sheet, which is submitted twice monthly. The auxiliary time sheet is signed by the person for whom I have been working on a project that pay period.

10% means 4 hours a week, so if a pay period ends in the middle of a week, that is pro-rated. This last pay period ended on a Monday, which meant that 0.8 of the 4 hours fell in the Feb. 1-15 pay period, and 3.2 in the Feb. 16-28 pay period.

Because of my job classification, I am not allowed to work more than 40 hours per week. Period. The state legislature passed a law against "excess compensation" for state employees, including university employees, during the worst of the recession last year. This law does not apply to classified staff, who are unionized. It also doesn't apply to faculty, who are not unionized but who kicked up such a fuss that an exception is made for them. (Case in point - I presented at a K-12 workshop in January, alongside a faculty member. Said faculty received a $300 honorarium; I got to work late that night.)

However, professional staff are neither unionized nor special, so we are the single remaining group of employees on the UW campus for whom this law can apply.

Long story short, that means I'm not allowed to work more than 40 hours per week, without exception.

Anyway, my last auxiliary time sheet said that I worked 0.5 hours on February 15, which was President's Day.

Friday morning, during my "real job" hours, I got a call from our financial administrator, who was sitting with the payroll coordinator, to ask about the time. She said it looked weird that I was working on a paid holiday. I responded that I do most of my auxiliary work remotely on the computer, so did it really make a difference? However, if she needed me to, I'd "move" that 0.5 hour to Sunday, the 14th.

She said she'd call HR to check on it and get back to me. About 15 minutes later, she called me back and asked me to re-do the time sheet, with that 0.5 hours on the 14th.

So I re-did the time sheet and took it up to the person I had worked for to have her re-sign the paperwork authorizing the payment. I then took it to the Payroll Coordinator. And that was that.

My auxiliary work has nothing to do with my salaried work, and I've done auxiliary work on holidays before without issue. It's not against the rules - at all.

The thing is, I don't get paid very much, in general. I make a nonprofit salary, so after taxes, 1/2 hour of work amounts to about $10, if that.

So this whole process took me about 30 minutes on Friday - away from my salaried position - plus probably 10 minutes of the HR person's time, 20 minutes of both the financial administrator's and payroll coordinator's time, and 10 minutes of the work supervisor's time, which means that we spent a lot more, collectively, to move 0.5 hours of time from one day to another because of a technicality, than I was getting paid in the first place for those 0.5 hours of time.

And the state of Washington wonders why it's broke.

Some Ridiculous Things, Part I

1-800-Flowers.com
I ordered flowers for my parents for their wedding anniversary back in December. The flowers did not arrive on the day they were supposed to, so when I wrote to 1-800-Flowers, the customer service rep said, "Oh, they'll be arriving the next day instead because of a problem at UPS. We'll send you a $20 gift certificate to put towards a future purchase because of the inconvenience." Or something like that.

I thought that was pretty cool, so I ordered flowers for Salt for Valentine's Day (using the certificate) to be delivered at her office on the 12th. Gerbera Daisies to be exact. They arrived dead.

I wrote to 1-800-Flowers, and they said that they were very sorry and would ship out a new order as soon as I told them when a good date would be and also would send me a $20 gift certificate.

After I wrote back, a different Customer Service rep responded again and apologized, saying that the item I had originally ordered was no longer available, but that I could choose a replacement in the same price range. So I picked out roses and lilies, which Salt also likes, and was informed by yet another Customer Service rep that they would arrive on the 24th.

Within hours after ordering the replacement flowers, I received a new email from a new Customer Service rep indicating that Salt would receive a totally random bouquet that customer service picked out.

Yellow roses - definitely not what I chose, and definitely not a good replacement for what was supposed to be a Valentine's Day present. This earned 1-800-Flowers another angry email from me, along with a promise that I would not be using their service ever again. Again, a new customer service rep responded, saying that she hoped I would give 1-800-Flowers a chance to show that they were the best flower service out there.

I responded a final time, saying that their record of 1) a late arrival, 2) dead flowers, and 3) completely disregarding my request for a replacement did not bode well for their claim of being the best service out there.

I received a last email today from an entirely different customer service rep with another apology, notifying me that I would be credited for the amount of the original order, and that a $20 gift certificate would also be mailed to me. No idea whether the unwanted replacement order is still be shipped.

Needless to say, we're using a different company to send Salt's parents flowers for their 30th anniversary next week.

The Inability to Say No

One of the cultural take-aways I learned in Korea is the inability to say 'no.' You can say that something would be "difficult" (or some equally appeasing adjective), but you can't actually say no.

Which, of course, means that you often end up doing things you don't actually want to do because you don't want to / can't say no.

So when a Korean acquaintance from my grad school cohort called me AT WORK to ask if I would edit his statement of purpose for the PhD program he's applying to, I said....

yes.

So he sent me his sample paper, instead, as his statement of purpose was "done."

Considering that we went to grad school together and took multiple courses together, I remember the paper he's using as a writing sample. I also remember how our professor ripped the research he had done apart.

I don't think he's made any changes to it since that time.

So that's what I'm doing on my day off.

Oh the Joys of Being (In)voluntarily in the Closet

A box arrived today for Salt from her maternal grandparents. It was soaking wet because our porch roof leaks, so I opened it when I got home to make sure nothing was ruined.

Carefully packaged in it were Christmas gifts for Salt and Morgan.

The majority of Salt's extended family doesn't know about us out of courtesy for Salt's parents.

So, we're roommates.

Which means that Morgan, the dog, warrants a Christmas present, but I, the roommate, do not.

I don't really give a shit about the presents.

It's the whole non-existent factor that gets to me.

I am not in college anymore for a reason...

... well, several, including the fact that I've graduated.

I was officially a "transfer" my first year of college, due to the fact that I started mid-way through my freshman year after spending a semester living in Germany. Thus, my choice for roommate was non-existent, and I ended up with one of two girls whose original roommates had left for one reason or another.

My roommate was very sweet and nice, but we also had nothing in common. She was very social and had a boyfriend in a fraternity.

They weren't exactly tactful about their habits, and they used to have sex while I was (pretending to be) asleep in the same room.

Fortunately, that was just a semester and I got to pick my roommate from there on out.

The house we live in now has horrible sound insulation, and our downstairs neighbor just got a new girlfriend. For some reason, when she stays over, they sleep in the bedroom directly below ours...

which is why I am posting this at 3:30 am.

(They're asleep now, but I'm not anymore.)

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