Now I can pay off that $1,400+ ticket I charged to my credit card with a $1,500 limit.

I shall also buy lots of cocaine.

=D

]]> http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/index.php/2008/08/22/calloo-callay-im-going-to-taiwan/feed/ 5 http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/index.php/2008/05/27/poo-too-weet/ http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/index.php/2008/05/27/poo-too-weet/#comments Tue, 27 May 2008 15:49:56 +0000 Conor http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/index.php/2008/05/27/poo-too-weet/ While in Vienna over the weekend, I definitely used my cell phone charger, because my phone is my only timepiece. I unfortunately had forgotten to load up on credit for my prepaid phone, so I couldn’t Twit like crazy while sipping Viennese coffee, climbing cathedral towers, prowling through used book shops, and drinking till I died. See? Only one link.

Well, that confounded charger is till in Vienna, at the place of the dude with whom we stayed. I have no desire whatsoever to contact that individual again (a much longer story, and one I would never go into in public), and I wouldn’t even expect him to actually send it, were I to contact him.

This means I have two weeks left in this country and no cell phone. Amazingly, my dumpy cell phone is one of the only models that the O2 store on Marienplatz, where I work, doesn’t have a charger for in their charging station. A friend had had the bright idea that I’d just charge the phone every day while at work, which would have been bitching. Alack.

So now I’m considering buying another cheapo phone, just to get my through the next two weeks. If I’m going to be doing a lot of traveling, I think it’d be a good idea. Especially so I can keep the Twits flowing.

But in the meantime, those of you who stalk me on Twitter are in for a dolorous dryspell.

We overstayed our welcome in Melk a bit and missed the last train that our tickets allowed us to take back to Salzburg, so we had to buy upgraded tickets—but this meant a faster train, which was spiffy. And all told, we spent only about €33 per person on train tickets for the entire trip. That means Munich to Salzburg to Linz to Vienna and back again, all for €33. Not bad, eh?

Accommodation was completely free, as we hit up Couch Surfing and found some people willing to lodge us for the weekend.

All told, the trip was utterly win. I’ve harvested about 4GB of photos, which I’ll have to pare down quite a bit before I begin uploading. Since I have work in the morning, I think I’m going to retire presently, but I’ll spend all of Monday evening hacking away at this mass of pictures.

I really should travel more.

And I really can’t complain about the tips I got tonight.

On my first run, the bill is €18.25 or something. I’m crossing my fingers that the guy will round up to 19, and enjoying pipedreams about receiving a crisp €20 bill and not having to give any change back. When I get there, I state the price, and the nice man at the door goes back inside to confer amongst his entourage. I hear him say, “Does anyone have a 2 euro piece?” I think that’s a bit weird, but maybe he needs another 2 euro piece, so he can pay me €19 and not have to ask for change back.

When he returns, he hands me a €20 bill and a €2 coin, says, “That’s fine the way it is.” I almost fell down the stairs. I thanked him profusely, gathered myself up on the mat outside his door so as not to soak the floorboards in the hallway, and extracted the pizzas from my “specially designed pre-heated Joey’s® bag” with the utmost care. After he had accepted them, I prostrated myself on the hallway floor and began to ululate.

I hope that that last decision does not adversely affect my tips from this goodly gentleman in the future.

Then, on my second run, I get another €3 tip. This time I take all the coins out of my wallet and toss them up in the air, laughing like a child running through a field of strawberries, stomping and picking and gobbling with joyful abandon. Again, I hope he still tips me well next time.

The rest of the night was filled with standard fair 20-30 cent crap, but hey, it was still a red-letter day.

Probably my favorite run all night was this gorgeous girl who was caught completely off guard by my rain-ravished good looks, and even blushed as I said hello. She started fumbling around with her purse, smiling and talking about the conditions of the delivery. “Well, because of the rain, and because it got here so fast, and, just, well, you know, because…” She then hands me a €20, then a 50 cent piece. The bill is €13.20. She tells me how much to give back, and I didn’t hear her, probably because I was staring or drooling or giggling too loudly. I have to ask her to repeat it, which is a tactic I usually reserve for particularly low tippers whom I want to give another chance before I get out the customer voodoo doll and chain it to the front tire of my moped for the trip back to the shop.

She looks a little surprised, but not quite insulted, and says, “Well, I guess, like, 7!” I purse my lips and decide whether to ask her to repeat it again, then figure it’s already an hour into my shift and far past time to break out the doll. So I thank her, hand her the pizza, which I did not shake excessively during extraction, then walk away as she tries to start a conversation.

Pretty girls can’t count.

Hooboy.

Turns out that when I’m not working, I can still order pizzas for delivery at 50% off. That’s nice. But now while on shift, instead of a free pizza, it’s 75% off. So I had to pay €1.60 for my pizza tonight, and I was pissed. At the rates Germans tip, that’s like 4 tips piled up together and deducted from my earnings for the evening.

It worked out OK, I guess, because they let me off a half hour early, which meant I got to drive the entire shift—Sundays are by far our busiest days—and then jump ship as soon as the mops and buckets were deployed.

But still, without that free pizza every night, I’m going to be in a bad mood coming off of work.

The best thing about this job is that every single night I work, I leave with a little bit of cash in my hand, from the tips I made that night. I go home and make three neat little piles: savings, bakery, beer store. I won’t get into percentages, the point is that I’m technically saving some of what I make (so I can pay for rent).

Another sweet aspect of the job is my slick pod racer.

Doesn’t that look absolutely pimp? By the way, mine is the red one in the foreground that says “Joey’s” on the side, not the motorcycle behind it under the blue cover. Just want to be clear on that.

Already I’ve gotten to know the city way better, poking around in neighborhoods I’d never have visited otherwise. I also get to cruise by famous places like the Nymphenburg Castle, which evidently is all lit up at night. In general, I’d say any city looks different at night than it does at the day, and different from the streets than it does from the sidewalks. (I’ve also had the pleasure of delivering to lawyers working late at night in an office building, the view from which definitely offered a perspective on the city I hadn’t before seen.)

I know I shouldn’t have been snapping pictures while still on the moped, but go to hell, it was fun. Plus the camera wasn’t mine, I’d borrowed Jesse’s, and so dropping it while at a stoplight and leaning over on the moped only to have it tip over and crush both my leg and the camera didn’t seem all that horrifying a prospect. Or something. (No jokes about the moped not being heavy enough to crush my legs. I have very slender, brittle legs. Any girl would love to have these legs.)

Last, I like my biker getup.

So if you weren’t jealous of the free beer, food, and cocktails at my other job, please be jealous of this. I thrive on it.

Zoom.

So one day while working in the O2 store, it’s pretty busy, and a coworker comes up to me and asks whether I can help her customer, whom she just sold a phone card to, load that credit onto his phone. She asked if I knew how to do it, and I smiled, because I of course have a prepaid phone, too, whereas all the other people at O2 make sweet cash and only have contracts, so they’re a little lost when it comes to the nuances of the prepaid life.

I take the phone and the card from her, and start talking to the customer, asking if maybe he has a coin I can bum to scratch off the code on the card. He fumbles in his pocket for a minute, then his buddy whips out a 1-cent piece and hands it to me. I liked this, because sometimes scratching off that lottery-paint crap with a clunkier €2 piece can result in damage, whether to the card or my hand, or even any bystanders. As we’re chatting, he interrupts me and asks if we could maybe do this in English. That, of all things, is not difficult for me. I said of course, and kept going.

He interrupts me again and asks where I studied in the U.S., because my American English was perfect. I explain my situation as an American student living in Munich, how I lost my internship, just need some sidejobs to pay the bills, and we laugh for a while. Then he’s quiet for a moment, and says, “You know… I’m hiring right now, actually.” I hand the penny back to his friend, who greets the gesture with a beaming smile.

Turns out this guy is an American who’s lived in Munich for the past six years, and he runs a bike tour company. He markets it exclusively to English speakers, and he likes to hire college-age native English speakers to give the tours. “I need someone who knows how to swear with young people, you know? Like really fuck with them. This isn’t really your typical tour, you see.”

We chat a bit more, and I take his card, promising to get in touch. Before he leaves, he turns and asks his friend what he thinks of me. The friend has been a tour guide for the past five years, apparently, so his initial reaction on my character is important. The friend smiles this crazily happy smile again, and says in the thickest of Irish accents, while looking at my nametag, “Conor. That’s a right good Irish name ya got yourself there, boy.”

They hired me.

As of yet, I haven’t made any money from this job, because I’m still in training. Understandably, there is a ton of reading and researching about the city to do before I’ll be able to give my own tours. So far I’ve tagged along on several tours to watch how they do it, and it’s done me well. I have their route through the city memorized, and now I just need to fill in the gaps in my knowledge for each stop we make. Was the Neues Rathaus completed in 1908 or 1909? Did Duke Wilhelm the V order the construction of the Hofbräuhaus before or after issuing his famous edict of the Beer Purity Law? It’s this kind of crap that I can really get into, especially as my knowledge of European medieval history was rather abysmal. (I’m much stronger in Scandinavian history!) Now I finally have stories about Barbarossa that weren’t written by Umberto Eco.

In that vein, by far my favorite aspect of this kind of research is there are several conflicting historical accounts for every building, sculpture, and historical event in this city. I’m reading books, scholarly papers, reading plaques, everything I can to get a decent understand of what happened when and who was there, or at least who said they were when writing about it.

But enough talk. Meet the boss, Lenny of Lenny’s Bike Tours.

Looks like a champ, eh? And those are the sweet bikes we cruise around on. Overall, I’m sure this job sounds pretty sweet, but there are yet more perks to it. One of the stops on the tour is the Chinese Tower, the second-largest beer garden in Munich, and there I get beer and food for free. Not bad, eh? And after the tour, people are encouraged to come with us over to Sausalito’s, by far the best cocktail bar in town, where I got two knock-you-on-your-ass cocktails, free. A related perk is that I meet people like Monk, who then invite me out for yet more drinking on someone else’s tab. God damn those Scots were fun guys!

OK, and now the downside. The tours are canceled during bad weather. Lenny claims this is only in the spring, as it’s still cold, and that during the summer people will be wearing ponchos and riding around in the rain and having a blast. We’ll see. But for now, it’s not a reliable job, because if I say, for example, “OK, I’ll see you on Tuesday” and then it ends up raining on Tuesday, I’m out a day’s work. Not cool.

Still, this financial instability may yet be made worthwhile by the shot at free cocktails with the right crowd.

These girls dug me even more than they dug Daniel the Irishman and his adorable accent, and that’s saying a lot. I suppose I’ll just have to play it by ear.

The catch? I need a full suit, which I totally don’t have. Blast.

Idea! I should ask my doppelganger. Who better to ask, really?

So I ask my good pal Alex, and he says he does indeed have a suit. I try it on, and it fits like pinch harmonics in a death metal song. I return to the tip-giving German to show it off, and am told that the job description stated it must be a white shirt. Mine was a very subtle shade of green, that honestly looked quite sharp—blast again.

I ended up borrowing an ill-fitting white shirt and ironing that. Doesn’t look quite as dashing as Alex’s original look, but the jacket and pants are solid enough to make it work.

Now, just what kind of one-time job one would need a suit for, anyway? Turns out I’m lucky enough to be a greeter at the flagship O2 (a cell phone company) store on Marienplatz. That means I stand in the lobby, look dashing, and say “Hello” to incoming customers and “Good-bye” to outgoing ones. Does that rock or what?

I work 10am-3pm tomorrow, and should get about €50 for it. That’s groceries for a whole freaking month. Next on the list: making rent!

Dear Conor,

I’m so sorry to have to tell you this

[...]

Nokia-Siemens very unfortunately
[...]

funding withdrawn, therefore

[...]

no, and futhermore

[...]

you’re fucked.

Sincerely,

Well isn’t that special? The research project at the university I was slated to take part in, paid for by Nokia Siemens, has been nixed and my position as research assistant died therewith. This trip just got a whole lot more interesting.

I still haven’t received the necessary certificates by mail that I need to work at the grocery store up the street, but I hope to get them yet this afternoon. The nice woman on the phone told me they would arrive at the very latest today. Even if they don’t, I’ll stop by the store and let the manager know that all my paperwork will be sent along very soon, and that he should hold the position open for me. He had said I couldn’t start working until March 1 anyway, so I don’t expect this to be a substantial problem.

Oh, and the hostels thing didn’t work out at all. I visited four.

Update: I did receive something from an agency supposed to send a certificate for a prospective employer, but it wasn’t actually the certificate. Sigh. I suppose I’ll receive that tomorrow. I did end up going down to the store to speak with the manager. The “manager” was not the gentleman I spoke with last time, as this person today was actually younger than I am. I explained I’d already stopped by about the “help wanted” sign and spoke with the boss who said to come back about this time with all the paperwork finished. The paperwork is taking longer than expected. The kid didn’t really care, told me not to stress about it and to turn the stuff in when I can.

This has me really excited, as it would be such a fun job to have, so much more so than working at a freaking grocery store, which right now is my only serious prospect. The trouble is, tomorrow (Wednesday) is the deadline for me to hand in all my freaking paperwork for this grocery store position, so I need to scout hostels thoroughly early in the morning. If I don’t find anything definite, I’ll have to default to going through with the grocery store and just bite the bullet.

So, thumbs up to prospects!

I Wikipedia’d “thumbs up” and was greeted with that image. The article is solid, and links to a sweet painting.

Rather recently, I finally picked up C&C3, which I play often and thoroughly enjoy, perhaps because I am utterly undefeated within my social circle. But who really knows? Now I find myself salivating over Call Of Duty 4, which looks like the absolute perfect replacement for my inexplicably persisting yet utterly characteristic fixation on Battlefield 2.

That’s like freaking Black Hawk Down right there. Of course, since I’ll never, ever run Vista, I’ll be stuck with DirectX 9 to run the game, and on my aging-with-cobwebs hardware it just won’t look this good. But I’ll know that it can. And that’s really what gaming’s all about, isn’t it?

The environments are breathtakingly beautiful, if you’re into post-apocalyptic war-torn socialist-utopia-turned-ghetto locales for your honeymoons. And boy am I. But in case all this isn’t selling you on the game, just listen to what Putin has to say about it.

As long as I’m embedding tons of crap, let’s see what Cheney thinks of the game.

I think that pretty much settles it. The problem is, I can’t find the damn thing for an affordable price around here. Steam wants $63 (10% off from $70, yay!) and electronics stores are still up at €55. I only paid €17 for C&C3, so it’s tricky justifying such a huge expense when I should be buying, you know, beer. I think I’ll just wait until I see it on sale somewhere.

In the meantime, I’ll continue salivating.

Screenshots in this post from Flickr user katakonik.

Subject:	0708 additional funding
Topic:	Scholarships and Financial Aid General
Submitted:	12/21/2007 09:57 AM
Last Updated:	12/27/2007 02:06 PM
Status:	Solved
Discussion Thread:	Conor: Please be advised that we were able to provide you with additional funding for the 2007-2008 academic year. A Drexel Award for $5,469 was posted to your account and your financial hold has been lifted. If you have any questions or concerns please do not hesitate to contact the financial aid office.
Account Balance:	Your current account balance, including recent account activity, is $-0.48.

This is the first year I didn’t borrow anything. Not a dime. All scholarships, all the way. Maybe this is why:

	Attempted	Earned	GPA Hours	Quality Points	GPA
Overall:	161.000	158.000	155.000	607.01	3.91

I think this is cause for celebration. I know no better way to do this than play C&C3 with Cihan until the sun rises.

The Chinese class was spectacular and I’ll dedicate another post just to that. In the meantime I’ll mention that I was able to take a trip to Saturn, which is kind of like a Best Buy, I guess, and scoop up some vitals:

• a set of headphones, Sony MDR-V150s (way too bassy, oh my god)
• a mouse! didn’t want to spring for the Logitech G5 (I have some restraint!) so I instead got a knockoff copy that feels absolutely great in my hand. I’ll test it later on, of course, and know for sure whether its performance is up to par.
• Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. This has me really, really excited. The game itself should be a blast, and quite nostalgic at that, as this iteration returns to the old storyline about Tiberium and global conflict between GDI and Nod. But it only occurred to me after I bought the game that the entire game will be in German. How cool is that? Even all the cinematic live-action cutscenes will be dubbed! Incredible. I’ll try to post some nice audio clips over the coming weeks.
• a winter coat! It was 20€. It looks freaking sharp, and it fits great. Pictures later. (This was purchased not at the Best Buyish store, of course)

So that was great. I was not able to decide on a set of speakers, which I achingly crave, and which cost only 30-50€. I didn’t have the balls to spring for the 50€, so I deferred the purchase till a time when I’m hopefully operating on slightly less impulse.

This electronics store also happens to be in the famous part of town, with the huge city hall with the Gothic façade and the Munich Cathedral and all that. This means it’s pretty much the beer capital of the world. So all the DAAD/SIP scholars decided to convene there tonight and have dinner together, which was an excellent time. At my behest, we went to an Augustiner house, and the beer was just as wonderful as expected.

Everybody got their usual (it’s funny how regular we are already), and the food was fantastic, too. I got a wurst platter because I thought it would be socially untenable (if rather convenient in terms of funds purgation) to order several different plates of various wursts. I chose right, all though I was still hungry afterwards and got yelled at for being cranky.

That’s about it. I just got yelled at for not being social, so I’m going to head down to the kitchen and have a beer with everyone, then come on back here and enjoy the ridiculous bass in these headphones. I actually had to open my equalizer and reduce all the lowend frequencies, ugh.

\m/

Oh, and I tried to buy a cell phone but failed miserably. Maybe that’ll get its own post someday, too, if I ever feel like talking about it.

I had some scouting around to do, like hunting down a classroom building in a different part of town. On my way around, I thought, what the hell, and checked at a Deutsche Bank ATM. It worked. There are 3,301€ just chilling in my account right now, aching to be spent on beer. I withdrew only 200€, because, you know, I didn’t want to go crazy or anything.

Sad thing is, the Radioactivity class went till 7:45pm, and all stores in the city close at 8pm. So I didn’t get to do my spending spree to trick out my life tonight, which is probably a good thing, as hopefully I’ll be a little more in control tomorrow. But before I went to the class I was able to pop into the upscale grocery store across the street from our dorm to pick up the necessities, like a loaf of bread, a carton of eggs, and a case of Augustiner. I splurged and got Augustiner Edelstof, because, well, I could.

Tonight I live like a king.

Oh, AND MY SISTER WROTE ME A LETTER. I checked my mail when I came home tonight, because I wanted to laugh at overdraft notices from my bank, as the student housing department in Munich has been trying to withdraw our rent for September and October, as well as our housing deposit, but instead all I found was a letter. To me. From my sister.

THANK YOU!

The parent site, CollegeScholarships.org, seems to be worth checking out in itself. Over the summer they wanted a new website, so they offered a $5000 scholarship for the best design. Sneaky and cheap on the one hand, welcomely magnanimous on the other.

I read about this on the Weblog Tools Collection, a site I often check for updates on the Wordpress software as well as blogging in general.

Hello,

the financial department informed me that they will start the transaction today but it will take about one week until it will be on your bank account (about 17 October). I am sorry for this but there was a delay in transferring the money from Hochschule Bremen (who is responsible for the program) to the account of Hochschule München.

[...]

I do apologize for any inconvenience. We tried to transfer you the money in the first week of October but it didn’t work. I’m so sorry.

Regards

Yay! Fortunately I have a paycheck from Drexel on the way toward being deposited, so I should be able to survive the few days until that clears and I can withdraw grocery money again. Here’s hoping!

I went and scooped up my key to the new place, packed up my things in the old place, and I’m off! I even met two Americans, one of whom lives at the other end of the hall from me at the new place. He studies civil engineering, is from California, and is beefy. He seems nice.

I’ve already snapped a few quick photos of my room, just so you guys can see how rad it is. I also made a brief movie so you can get the full effect. The movie is very small, should only take a moment to download. (I don’t yet know how to embed video on this page, and unfortunately I can’t afford to do the research on how to do it right now, because I’m paying for time online. When I figure it out, though, I’ll update this page.) I’ll add more pics to the album over time, too, and will make sure to let you know.

I’m also told that my room might have wireless in two to three months–it’s currently being installed, and it’s estimated to be completed this fall. My rent will go up once it’s active, but not by much (10€or 20€ or something). Worth it! And it seems that I won’t be able to get onto the FHM wireless until I have a student ID and all that, which I don’t think I’ll have before the orientation sessions, which are near the end of September. Oh well. I guess I’ll just have to try to be social IRL till then.

Right now I’m dashing off to the bank, as I’m told that the housing contract I signed today should be sufficient information to convince the bank I’m legit. More on that later!

1. Opening the account tomorrow would mean I have to wait until at least early next week for my stipend.
2. Even with the certificate, there might be other hoops I have to jump through to open the account. (From my correspondence with the teller this afternoon, though, I do not think this is the case.)
3. I’m not confident I can get a proof of residence from the student office in the morning, given that my housing accommodations are not settled. Good Ms. Brendel was exceptionally empathetic, though–I mean, it kind of is her fault that I don’t have a place–and so I think that with a little persistence I would be able to procure at least a temporary certificate, good enough for use with the bank.

So that’s where things stand right now. I believe the rest of the day will be spent wandering the rainy streets near the Hauptbahnhof, till it gets dark and I feel like coughing up €2,20 for the trip home. I’ll try to take some good pictures!

Thereafter I’ll be in my dorm room, awake as long as I can muster, so I can sort pictures and upload them at the cafe sometime this week. I’ll also see whom I can meet around my dorm building. I’ve already made the acquaintance of one chap, who unfortunately will be leaving in two days, thus rendering my awkward phrasings of the overtures to friendship gar zwecklos.

Prost!

Time’s up in cafe! Posting.

Another option was a $609 one-way ticket to Munich; I could over the course of my stay put money aside towards a one-way back, which, the agent advised me, would run me about $800 or so (because June is high traffic). This seems the most appealing, given that it would let me get off to Munich in a hurry, but the problem is that once I arrive, I will be reimbursed my travel expenses. This makes me want to buy the $1100 round-trip ticket, as I’ll be reimbursed that in full, and then have money to spend in Munich, but I can’t afford that one!

I’ve had a professor who’s spent a lot of time in Germany recommend that I check out flying through Zurich and onto Munich. That’s certainly a route I wouldn’t have considered, and he thinks it might come out pretty cheaply. We’ll see. I’d still want to try to buy a round-trip, so that I get fully reimbursed once I arrive in Munich.

Julia of course encourages me to try Priceline or CheapoAir or something, buy the ticket and leave the next day. That only works when the schedule is flexible, and mine for arriving very much is. She cautions me, though, that this usually works best domestically, and that international flights might now have falling rates as the date approaches. I’m no economist, but I would think they would. Time to roll the dice.