More Flickr

It keeps amazing me, how many great tools are readily available online, free of charge. After the big collapse around 2oo2 I expected that most of the really interesting sites would be requiring money, but as it seems, this expectation did not exactly come true ... luckily.

These days I have been playing around with Flickr, as you probably noticed already. Curious as I am, I wanted to know a bit more about it, especially since a big hype exists around it at the moment. It's fascinating to see what is happening here. In November 2005 Flickr has around 1,5 million registered users, and hosted over 60 million images. In March 2005, Flickr was bought by Yahoo. Flickr is not only a website on which you can store pictures and make them available to the outside world. It's an Internet community tool, offering an API with which applications can be made that use the Flickr picture data base as input. A particularly nice one is flickrgraph in which you can surf from one of pictures to other. The blogger Dutch pentdego also shows a nice application on his website.

I do wonder, whether Flickr thought about the Netherlands as a target market .... the name suggests content of a somewhat different nature, in Dutch. A short check of the popularity of the site in the Netherlands in comparison to other countries might be interesting.

Skiing in Montafon

P1220061,
originally uploaded by arnoud_r.

Have been away for a week; skiing in Montafon, Austria.

I asked myself again, how I could have refrained from skiing for so many years.

As you can see on the picture, the conditions were perfect: sunshine, lots of snow, and almost no wind. I am already looking forward to next year.

By the way, I submitted this post from Flickr
. If you would like to see some more pictures, check them out here.

The "per Du" ritual

Another element which characterises the German culture in my eyes is the way to address someone. In principle, adults address each other with the formal form of “you” (which does not exist in English), “Sie” in German. Not so difficult, so far. Difficult is the question when to change from the formal to the informal “you” (“Du” in German; people that use this form are called to be “per Du” with each other).
As a Dutch, I was used to address my Dutch colleagues at work informally, almost regardless of age or hierarchical level. So, having to address my German colleagues in this formal way, felt a bit awkward for me in the beginning. After a while I got used to it, but I haven't really developed a feeling for the moment the formal form can be swapped for the informal yet.

If there is one at all, the rule pretty much follows the Chinese Confucian principle: the elder person can offer the younger person to use the informal “you”, but the person higher in hierarchy can offer his subordinates the informal form, regardless of the age difference. I don’t know who is to offer the “Du” form, between a man and a woman of equal age, on the same hierarchical level.
Of course, nowadays, pragmatic ways are used more and more, and the trend is definitely towards the informal form, especially amongst younger people. But still, the ritual is still there, especially in the more conservative and traditional companies.

Always a good occasion to ‘promote’ your relationship with senior colleagues to the informal level is an overnight business trip to a remote location, like the one I was on during the past two days. After a few drinks and a few jokes, the atmosphere is optimal for the “per Du” ritual. I have to admit, the whole thing does have a certain charm to it.

Website under construction

Every now and then, I get the urge to change things around me. Not everything, just this and that. So it happened that this urge targeted the weblog you are looking at now ... hence the different formatting you might have been surprised about.

Although time consuming, the face-lift was good fun to do and a good way to learn something about CSS style sheets.

It's still under construction, though. Still have to find a nice heading background picture, for example. But suggestions for improvement are already welcome.

Bye bye Weihnachtsmarkt

Xmas is over and a new year has begun. Every year I am stunned about it, how quickly these Xmas holidays go by. Soon, all Xmas treees and Xmas decoration will be removed from the homes, the offices, the shops, and city center. Soon, the cosy winter atmosphere that could be felt wherever you were, will be over again. Of course, it cannot be Xmas the wshole year round, but I experience the disappearing of all those lights, the bells, the candles with a light feeling of sadness.

When I just moved to Germany, there was one German tradition that I considered with some scepticism: the so called "Weihnachtsmarkt", or Xmas market. A few weeks before Xmas, usually with the beginning of the "advent", in almost all German cities and villages small stalls are built of in the center of town, in which Glühwein (hot, spiced wine), German snacks like "Reibkuchen" (a deep fried flat piece of a specially prepared potatoe dough) with aplle mouse, and nick-nacks are sold. Almost everyone goes to the Xmas market, preferably in the evening to enjoy a glühwein or two and socialise a bit.
The first time I went there, I did not really understand what was so enjoyable about standing in the freezing cold to have a drink. But, after three years of living here, I have come to appreciate this typical German tradition. The evening atmosphere on a warmly lit Xmas market on the central square of an old German town is an experience not to miss, if you happen to visit Germany in the weeks before Xmas.