Annettes Besuch

Annette’s visit
It is already 0014h, but let’s see how much I can write before the zz monster takes over.
Annette, my German host when I was in sec 3, came to visit me at Nuremberg on Sunday, 22nd May. It seems that she is just growing prettier every time I see her=) Lothar and Renate, her parents, and Daniel, her younger brother came as well. They traveled 4 entire hours to reach me=p I tried to treat them to “Kaffee”, the german style, with cakes and pastries. But I could fully understand their lack of enthusiasm for butter cake bought from a supermarkt and instant choc cappuccino and instant peach tea. =) (*note: German Kaffee is a big business, with a selection of home-made cakes, and real, brewed coffee. People can sit around for hours in the garden, just enjoying the sun, food and company.)

I brought them around town, went to the Albrecht Duerer Museum in the Altstadt of Nuremberg, which told us the life story of Albrecht Duerer, a famous artist and writer, famous for his “Selbstbildnis” or self-protrait, in which he painted himself as a noble man, and an open window behind him indicated the kind of openness and freedom of thought, the vision that intelligence brings along with it. He was also famous for his painting of the rhinoceros, amazing because it is so life-like, though he has never ever seen a rhino before. Imagine, the people in the 1500s probably thought that the rhino was some prehistoric creature or some mythical being. Anyway, I must qualify that this is all prior knowledge before I visited the museum…the museum just told us of Duerer’s life through the eyes of his wife, a middle-aged ‘ah soh’, and said little about his works. However, I must admit that some exhibits were good, such as that of the metal engraving and the video show, and the museums here always provide you with a personal hearing guide, which is really wonderful. We should have that back home too.

We went on to Dutzendteich, the Nazi party’s land and the great museum there, as I have mentioned in one of my earlier entries. I hope they had a good time, for they seem to be people who like museums, who always are excited at the prospect of more knowledge. I talked a lot to Annette, and found out that she intends to just do an Ausbildung or ‘training’ at a German firm, and perhaps she would not even go on to Uni. This is probably unimaginable to people at home, right? Uni studies seem to be all-so-important, but the thing is that people in developed countries still do very well without one. In fact, they do BETTER without one, for like Annette, she would probably stay in the same firm she does her training in, and rise up far up the ranks if she does her job well. Not going through Uni allows her to save time on education that is not necessary in this case. In fact, haven’t we heard of the Jap internet maverick, who tried to take over some major Japanese network companies so that his company would have a greater presence…anyway he said that the best thing to do is to set up your own company after high school, and manage your own business. There is a Chinese saying “Chu1 sheng1 zhi1 du3 bu2 pa4 hu3”, so I guess this is the only time, when one knows nothing yet about fearing to fail, that one has the best chance to succeed.

Right, the zz monster is starting to take over. Will tell ya more tmr. =)