Homo Viator

This blog will shut down until January 7th....

Sorry. Almost 2 weeks without a single post. I hate doing that, since I know how disappointing it is to visit a blog that boasts the same front page as the last time one visited it. This time I do have a good excuse though: I moved! I moved from Munich to Berlin. It is the first time in my life that I moved anywhere with more than a suitcase. Since leaving Munich ten years ago, I moved to a lot of places (12 countries if I counted right), but I never took more than a suitcase. This time I properly moved, with all my stuff, and it was quite some work. Doing it all just a couple of days before X-Mas and my trip to China added some beloved stress to the equation. The blog was dead, but it shall long live on. Next year I will start a routine that I never had and this blog shall be part of that routine. I promise you at least 5 posts per week! If I do not hold my promise, you can sue me. Alex will hopefully have the new design of the blog ready by January, so Homo Viator will be off to a complete revamp. I alreday have notes on many posts I want to write about and you shall see some vids from my trip to China, as well as from colorful, intriguing Berlin and my new flat there. Have a special X-Mas and a good start to 2008. HV

Yes, it is the John Lennon song.....AGAIN. In good old Homo Viator tradition. Well, if you know a better X-Mas song, then please let me know.

Check it out.

The discussion on manager salaries has been a mass media favorite for quite some time in Germany, but now leading politicians take this discussion to the political level. Since most people in Germany agree that top managers earn too much money, politicians make use of this issue to please voters. Some go as far as to call for a maximum wage that companies would be allowed to pay to their top employees. Those proposals are of course of pure populist nature. A maximum wage would not even be complimentary with our constitution. Since everybody knows that politicians in Germany cannot effectively influence the salaries of top earners, I really ask myself why we have such a discussion in the first place. Yes, politicians do not only have a legislative mandate. They also have a responsibility to give thought-provoking impulses to the society at large. But shouldn`t our society have bigger worries than to snoop around and criticize certain managers for their yearly paycheck?

I do not understand the craze at all. It is true that some managers earn several thousand times the amount that their employees make and that this sounds rather weird. But think about it the other way: They still make much less than some boozed up rock star or the lame sport hero that exactly those people, who criticize the salaries of top managers, admire so much. Now think about the responsibility and the societal impact that a CEO of a company like Siemens has. Siemens has more than 400.000 employees, which means that it directly feeds approximately 800.000 people. Probably more, as Siemens employees are good German citizens with big families. Indirectly, counting in all suppliers and business buyers, indirectly Siemens probably feeds around 1.5million people. Doesn`t the guy, who works on ensuring the continious and growing food supply to 1.5million people, deserve a ultra-high salary?

There is lots I would like to write about on this issue, as it is one that I get very excited about. Envy, mixed up with populist discussions makes me rather angry. Wow, what a rhyme! But I am too tired today and not really in the modd of writing, so just two more things on the side: In Italy, society and media do not criticize the salaraies of top managers, but the 10.000EUR salaries of parlamentarians instead. Now that is a twisted logic. In my opinion politicians in Europe earn way to little. In my last job I saw the schedules of some heavy weight ministers and I tell you that they truly work their ass of, for as little as 10.000EUR a month. A German TV showmaster earns in a day what our chancellor earns in a year!

And lastly, sorry for this rather unstructured post, but I am really not in the mood to write today: Transpareny. Employees across Germany call for transparency, saying that they deserve to know what their top managers earn. I find that to be the most absurd proposal ever. I ask myself whether those employees would be willing to post a sign on THEIR doors, a sign that would state what THEY make a month. Maybe they should start with that. This would probably show them the effectiveness of their proposal. By doing this, they would realize that such transparency would result in envy and back stabbing even at the lower ranks. One secretary would end up questioning and criticizing another, who makes 100 EUR more a month. It just makes no sense. Employees do not need to know what their bosses earn and they do not have a right to know it. Only the owners of the company, the shareholders, have a right to know it. Ufffff, did not enjoy writing that post.

When I was a music-addicted teenager, who would at times trade communicating with the family with listening to the same old songs over and over again (Bobby D., the Beatles, Donovan - am I repeating myself?), my mom saw a need to impose the following rule: "On the 24th, there is no other music allowed than classical music."

Rules in my up-bringing were thankfully considered to be less effective than trust and responsbile freedom, so this rule was one of the few ones that I had to endure. But it was nevertheless a tough one to follow. There was however one classical CD that after hearing it year after year became one of my absolute favorite CDs and I will surely pass on the tradition of my grand father and play it throughout the X-Mas days, in full-blast volume. It is called Misa Criolla and is by Argentinian born composer Ariel Ramírez. you gotta get the Carreras version though!

Don`t be put off by the trailer. The movie is much better than the trailer will make you think and even though you hear and read some German, I can assure you that the movie is 99% in English. Three of the four travellers it follows are British, who do not speak a single word of German. So try to see it, wherever you may live!

If you have ever backpacked this is a must see and if you have never backpacked and always asked youself why we do it, then you may also want to check it out. When I heard that Germans had produced a movie about four backpackers in Asia (India and Thailand), I expected the worst: An unrealistic, exaggerated, stereotyping movie full of clichees. But don`t worry, the movie is far from that. It is almost documentary in style and does not forcefully try to convey anything in particular to the viewer. Thankfully, it does not spend too much time showing us how different backpackers can be. We all have our own backpacker stereotypes (The beer drinking Brit, The unpresent American, The Trance listening and group travelling Israelis, etc.), but the movie goes way beyond feeding and recycling those. It effectively depicts those seemingly unspectacular, but real, travel experiences that you can only have if you travel with time and can forget about your itinery and allow yourself to open up to and connect with locals and fellow travellers. Those are the moments, where you do not seem to be travelling anymore, but seem to have found a home among strangers, far away from home. To me those are the forgotten highlights of my trips.



Many scenes of the movie play in the Pune Ashram. My sister taught Yoga there, so I can`t wait to hear what she thinks about the movie and its representation of the Ashram.

Modern art will move more and more online. Guys, whether you want it or not: The Web will swallow everything! It is growing, unstoppable and will encounter things we never hoped to give out of our hands and into the hands of the machine. Milton is one internet artists who gets more and more recognition. Many others will follow, don`t you worry. Wanna be your own Pollock?

Back in 2005, aSmallWorld had considerable momentum, but failed to build on it. While other sites such as facebook constantly re-invented themselves and opened up to external developers and their applications, ASW remeained as static as any internet company could be. As a result, it pretty much lost all early memebers. In order to counter that trend, it opened up to new members and ASW is thus everything but "small" these days. Apart from my madeinitalynyc friends, who use the site for party invites, I do not know of anyone who still actively uses ASW to please their exhibitionist traits. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Yesterday ASW announced that it saw a need, to add further functionalities to the site. What a flash of genius! People can now upload photos.... WOOOOW! Isn´t that innovative.

Before completely smashing their new feauture let´s wait and check it out. If they designed it nicely and integrated tagging capabilities and maybe a wall for people to post on, I could imagine the site to gain momentum once again. Facebook is beginning to suffer from an overload of unuseful and childishly stupid applications.

It is looking good. The time I took to find a place paid off. Ironically it it was the last three apartments of about 30 I saw that I liked best. Made an offer to all three and am waiting for response. Gotta run, will look at one more, just to get rid off post-purchase-cognitive-dissonance. P.s. From now on I will video blog lil Woischnik`s attempt to furnish a flat and act like a real Handyman. I will try to understand what DIY stands for and will look at shades of defeat and victory.