Shuarian’s Weblog

From Wikipedia’s definition of profanity:

‘(…) swearing is not restricted to Americans.’

Who’d have guessed…

I don’t normally comment on new links of the miscellaneous category; visitors should wander off into the unknown, and be surprised at where they end up. However, Urban Chaos is such a cool site I can’t resist to throw it into the spotlight:

Urban Chaos

It would be awesome to have one of these pictograms (on a real traffic sign, of course) for my room! I know the pictogram can be printed out, but that’s not the same. It actually shouldn’t be too difficult to obtain an old traffic sign. Hm.

Es war einmal ein Palästina

Last week, I’ve finally finished reading ‘Es war einmal ein Palästina’ (English title: One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate) by Tom Segev. The book follows the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the British rule of then Palestine. It starts with the conquest of large part of the Middle East from the Ottoman Empire during World War I, covers their subsequent mandate from the League of Nations for governing Palestine and ends with a long-winded but hasted withdrawal in 1947/48.

Tom Segev is able to paint a comprehensive description of the history and situation in Palestine. He describes not only the life of the ‘movers and shakers’ but also of ordinary people, and thus shows both the big picture and the small but more vivid daily struggle of ordinary people. His reproduction of the many historical events and incidents appears accurate, well written and fairly balanced.

Of course, the book also has its drawbacks. Towards the final years of the covered time period, the narration gets more and more non-linear, and it becomes more difficult to follow every jump between dates, persons and places. Likewise, it feels as if the author wanted to come to an end, and hasn’t paid these last years an equal amount of attention. Additionally, the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 gets only little coverage, which is a bit unjust for such an important event.

My biggest criticism lies in his position towards the use of violence. Many passages state that there never has been a chance for a peaceful resolution of the conflict, which is a very disputatious position in my book.

Still, the book is very interesting and insightful to read. It identifies many false claims by the conflict parties, and offers factual information as well as anecdotal stories. Clearly a recommendable book about events which happened more than fifty years ago yet are still relevant today.

Der Besuch der alten Dame

In addition to the above book, I’ve also read ‘Der Besuch der alten Dame’ (English title: The Visit). The book by Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt was part of an assignment for my German class, and I greatly enjoyed it.

In short, it deals with the question of guilt and liability, and human nature. As the story unfolds, a once seemingly steadfast community corrupts their moral and uses self-delusion to sanctify their greed for money and a better life, all under the non-investigative eyes of journalists. Still,the book has many funny and comical moments, and is written brilliantly.

The author himself sees his book as a ‘Tragische Komödie’ (tragic comedy). According to him, today’s world has no tragedy (in the greek sense) anymore, just absurd and comical situations. With this book, he clearly made that point, and I hope for a chance to see the play one day.

Die Qual der Wahl

Upon finishing these two books, I realised how much I’ve enjoyed reading them. Yet over the last three years I’ve read so little, maybe 20 - 30 books a year; my prior average was 50 to 70. It’s not that I have no time, actually, it’s more that I’m so slow at deciding on a new book, and giving reading the proper amount of time. Once I really start reading a book, I usually maintain a fast and steady pace and enjoy it enormously.

I hope once I’ve finished my website (which takes away large amount of my free time at the moment) the situation will change for the better. For now, I’m still a bit stuck, maybe too unmotivated. I still haven’t decided which book to read next! At the moment, I favour a short, light fictional book, as I’m not really in the mood for something too serious or too dark. After going through my library, I’ve come up with the following selection:

• Jennifer Paddock: A Secret Word
• Raymond Carver: What we talk about when we talk about love
• Paulo Coelho: The Alchemist
• Leoluca Orlando: Der sizilianische Karren (no English translation available)

I guess now I have what German dubs the ‘Qual der Wahl’, a situation where it’s difficult to make a decision because of the many
available opportunities. If I haven’t decided for a book by tomorrow I’ll probably just toss a coin…

Still alive :-)

I haven’t updated the blog for quite some time, and figured it would do no harm to do so now. I’ve once read there would be nothing more dull than blogging about blogging. Well, I guess blogging about not blogging is even more boring, thus I won’t go into the reason for my absence. I’m just wondering how interesting this makes not blogging about not blogging, but that question makes my head spin! Instead, I’ll try to write some entries over the course of the next few days, so stay tuned.

As a first step, I’ve added some more links to various categories, all miscellaneous entries are now chosen and displayed randomly. Also, check out the links in the ‘other noteworthy blogs’ and ‘current issues’. Additionally, the sidebar to the right now also displays my current local time, whoaa.

Deceased: Stanislaw Lem

On Monday, 27 March 2006, Stanislaw Lem died at the age of 84. This is a sad note indeed, and he will be greatly missed. What strikes me the most about his work is his ability to deliver a well thought out mix between science fiction and philosophy, written in an ironic and critical tone. If you haven’t done so yet, you definitely should read one of his books.

Read his entry on Wikipedia.
Read the German essays he wrote for Telepolis.
Read some of his books.
Watch the masterful film adaptation of Solaris by Andrei Tarkovsky.

I meant to post this much earlier but never had the time to finish it. Actually, it still isn’t finished, but it’s a good account of the mood I had at that specific point in time, when I was waiting for the last bus at midnight to bring me home safely.

There’s a young man, close to twenty. Or is he an old boy? He’s looking through the glass of a vending machine, throwing a longing glance at the offered snacks, foods and cigarettes. Will any of these 24 hours products be able to satisfy his needs?

A girl, of about the same age, is slowly passing by, eying him carefully but intensely. Besides her obvious interest, she appears helpless, not knowing what to do. Eventually she seeks refuge in distance, and separates herself from the world by listening to her portable music player. Meanwhile, the boy buys some snacks and watches the girl silently. Two buses are coming. They leave alone, the timetable says so.

Later on, an elderly gentleman in a grey trench coat approaches me. He appears to be in his late forties and has a friendly look. Like me, he needs to catch his last bus home. Unlike me, he doesn’t know for sure which one this would be. Apologetic but with dignity he explains how the company he works for more than twenty years had a reorganisation and moved from the Baden area to Berne, leaving him little choice but to commute for almost four hours a day. As this happened only recently, he still isn’t familiar with the timetables. Does he have a choice? He can’t relocate because he already has a mortgage to pay off, and won’t relocate because his children are still going to school. So he sees them fairly infrequently, but as the harsh saying goes: If your family complains they don’t see enough of you, ask them if they really want to see you the whole day (read: you either have to work hard or get fired). Is this fair? I help him to find the right bus, and away he goes. Good luck.

Finally my own bus arrives, and together with a few other people I enter. The bus drives away slowly from the station. The motor makes some weird and desperate noises, and some stations later the engine fails - no bus anymore. I’m really proud to be be a member of the species which, just for occasions like this, invented taxis.  

Compared to a bus, a taxi means less space. The people who tried to justly divide the distance between them on the bus are now all sitting close together. Our spirit is risen. The bus failed, we’re all part of something unique now; part of a conspiratorial group!

One of our group, a man aged approximately thirty, once had a crash with a motorbike. And while he didn’t exceed the allowed alcohol limit for driving, he still blames the alcohol for the severe injury he got. He has learnt his lesson the hard way, and never drives and drinks at the same time anymore.

There’s a business man who, despite being clearly a native speaker of Swiss-German, only knows the English expression of some terms. At the end of our trip, he asks the taxi driver for his ‘business card‘ (instead of the German ‘Visitenkarte‘). The poor driver needed some time to figure out what was expected of him.

Other passengers include two teenagers. They are clothed in a typical hip hop fashion style, which is shabby enough to warrant their street cred but also polished enough to impress. Yet still they are able to talk intelligently about their daily day at work and their eduction in school. When the topic comes to a person they dislike, though, they resort to name-calling.

The taxi driver and our bus driver also start a discussion. These are the persons who work hard at night yet rarely get noticed by the people they do the work for. They understand each other perfectly, being different personalities but sharing similar fates. Their topics are very down to earth, talking about salaries, living costs and road shortcuts.

And then there’s me, silently taking notice.

Stacia was so nice to point me to Deepest Sender, a plugin for Firefox which allows me to post new blog entries directly from within the browser. After some fiddling I finally was able to install it, and a quick test confirmed that it should work. It does anyway if this post shows up :-)

After two weeks of maintaining this blog I come to understand that it isn’t that easy to write meaningful entries, and even more difficult to do so in a timely and regularly fashion. I have to see what the future holds, but with Deepest Sender and some further advise on blogging I got from Stacia I finally should be well prepared.

Actually, I’m still Stefan Donati. But since I don’t have time to write something intelligent/interesting/useful/yougettheidea I thought I might as well just post the last Internet quiz I’ve took: Which Fantasy/SciFi Character Are You?.

As the title suggests, I’d be Marcus Cole:

An honest and chivalrous adventurer that pursues just causes, you would sacrifice much to help others.

I am a Ranger. We walk in the dark places no others will enter. We stand on the bridge and no-one may pass. We live for the One, we die for the One.

Marcus is a character in the Babylon 5 universe. You can read his profile at the Worlds of JMS.

I’m quite happy I got a character from my favourite SciFi show. Seems like I really have to watch the complete B5 series on DVD with Bernhard one day!