Time is flying, has been and will ever do so!
2008
Hey my friends,
as you guys noticed, the last couple of weeks/months were really tough and I had time for nothing but the stuff that had to be done. Accordingly I thought it might be a good idea to explain to you what has actually happened.
Basically everything started back in April, when I had that big Conference on „Resource Efficiency“ in Paris and worked my ass off so that would run smooth. It did and was really really great but ever since then my time-management got a bit off limits. While I worked a lot for UNEP on many different things, I didn‘t manage to start writing my study as planned. Besides I got a rupture of my cruciate ligament at the end of May that put even more stress on me. As the last couple weeks in Paris were flooded with work as well as with everyday farewell-parties or other stuff, I wasn‘t home for more than 8h each day and thus had trouble to find time to wash my cloths (washing machine needed 3h…).
When I came back to Germany at the end of June I thought I could start right away with the study so that I wouldn‘t run into problems with deadlines on the study and my Bachelor Thesis. Well, as always, it turned out different and I had to spend the first two weeks on „administrative stuff“ by what I mean lots of university related issues, be it in Bremen or Berlin. I had to spend lots of time on travel and saw a couple of docs to see what I could and should do about my knee. After two weeks doing everything but writing I started and didn’t stop for the following 6 weeks. I wrote wrote/worked each day more than 11h – normally more! I wouldn’t stop before I had written the points I had on my agenda for the day and thus managed to write a study comprising out of more than 100 pages that I would regard as the most comprehensive literature you can get about the metals topic as of today 😉 😎
While writing I had to find a place to stay in Berlin as I knew I wouldn’t have time to do it in September. As I was searching for flat-shares, a friend of mine called me and offered me to move with her and two other people in an apartment she wanted to overtake from friends of her. We had a look at the apartment and it was just perfect. Thus I went back home writing and left the “organizational†part to my friend until she called and said that the landlord wanted to have 300€ more than before! 😯 👿 As that would have been way above our limit, I found myself back in September without an apartment in Berlin knowing that I wouldn’t have any time to search for an alternative before October…
But back to the study, I received the comments from colleagues and my boss at UNEP at the end of August and started to include them into my study as far as possible. Having in mind that I would have to shorten my study down to 50 pages in order to hand it in as my Bachelor Thesis I sorted the remarks and included the ones I found important. Without telling you the whole and long story (I managed to shorten the 100 pages down to 60 in one day!), I ended up mailing my Bachelor Thesis at half past two on a Monday morning in Belfast to my flat-mate Christian in Bremen who printed and delivered it to my Professor (Thank you SO much for that)!
I guess I never ever worked so hard on my birthday on the 4th of September as this year but I had to, as I had booked a flight to Ireland for Friday the 5th. I had booked that way before all the trouble came up and so no choice but to be finished by then – as you read, I didn’t quite manage… I went to Boyle (In the middle of nowhere in West-Ireland) to visit Imke who did an internship over there. After two very nice days with her and her friend Chathy I took a bus to Sarah who lives in Belfast 😀 I spend three wonderful days with her and her very nice family and other friends of ours and enjoyed Belfast very much. On Wednesday I had planned a 9h trip by train and ferry to Oxford that ended up in a 22h trip as the ferry didn’t operate due to bad weather conditions… I arrived accordingly at a quarter past eight on Thursday in Oxford where Leonie waited for me 😀 After a couple awesome days with her I flew back to Bremen on the following Saturday, went to Osnabrück on Sunday and came back to Bremen on Monday in order to move out of my apartment in Bremen until Friday.
As in the weeks before, I didn’t got much sleep in Ireland and the UK but had to work my ass off to get my stuff to my family in Osnabrück, clean not only my room but the whole apartment and paint my door and room in white… Everybody who’s ever been at my place in Bremen might have a slight idea of how much work that was… Actually I didn’t sleep for two nights, as I had to paint the walls over and over! As a result I couldn’t do all the cleaning that had been demanded so I actually lost 80€ of my deposit due to not fulfilling the demand completely! 🙁
As tough as it was, I left the apartment on Saturday morning and drove with my friend Andre to Hannover, in order to catch our flight to Valencia. Back in Paris we had booked that flight and planned a little round-trip through Spain. We spend the first two days in Valencia and then rented a car and drove down to Granda where we spend another two nights. After having passed a day at the Costa del Sol, Torre del Mare and Malaga we arrived in Cordoba. While we had a reservation for the first night, the second turned out to be a little bit more “improvised†😉 We had planned to drive to Belen, a friend of ours in Madrid, but she had informed us that her parents wouldn’t leave before Saturday morning so we couldn’t come earlier… Plan B was then to party with my friends from Paris, Alba, Mila, Paloma, Helena and other nice folks in Cordoba until four in the morning in order to see the time passing by 😉 After a little “night-photo-shooting†(you know, there’s one bidge that so photogenic at night… 😉 ) I took the challenge and drove towards Madrid for the next two hours! After all I had to pay tribute to my constant lack of sleep and thus we stopped at a gas station for taking a two hours nap. Two hours later we arrived save in Madrid and spend 3 awesome days there 😀 After a nice weekend we drove back on Monday and arrived in Valencia at midnight. After these fantastic days I had to suffer under very bad pain in the stomach and had to spend the day at Manu’s place, where we stayed. The following Wednesday, the first of October, we flew back to Germany that welcomed us with rainy cold typical German weather that stood in direct contrast to the sunshine and degrees between 23-28° that we’ve had in Spain…
Being back in Germany things went crazy. I had to spend the first three weeks at friend’s places (Stella, Stefan and especially Kyra, I owe you guys sooooooooo much) as I neither found a flat-share that wanted me nor a nice apartment to start up a new flat-share 🙁 But yesterday brought the sunshine back in my life. I received a call on Sunday evening from a Lady that offered me her apartment, I checked it out yesterday and moved in the very same day 😎 Today I got the Internet and W-Lan running so I’m more than happy! The apartment is located right at the station “Hackescher Markt†(the entrance is less than 30m away!!!), has an elevator to the apartment in the third floor and is fully furnished 😀 For now, I can stay for two month with the option to stay longer! In short: I’M SOOOOOOOOOOO HAPPY 😀
While it’s so good to be able to say, “this is my place†(which I couldn’t do since I left Paris) and having my very own key, the best thing is that we’ve an elevator, as my knee is going to be operated on Tuesday! As a result I’ll have to walk with crutches for the next three weeks and thus depend very much on elevators and escalators! 😀
Okay, while the operation will largely influence the upcoming weeks, I’ll finish my study and try to get my “student-life†back on track. Speaking of which, I almost forgot the trouble I had to register and deregister for university three respectively two… But now I’m studying what I ever wanted to study: “Public and Private Environmental Management†and I just LOVE IT!!! 😀
Okay, as you probably know by now, I’m so damn happy right now that everything finally turns out to work the way it should and thus I really hope I’ll find now the time to catch up with you guys again! 😀
If there’s one thing this long entry was supposed to say than it is this:
I’M REALLY REALLY SORRY for not being very responsive over the course of the last couple month but I guess after having read all this you might have a slight idea why I just could not answer all your emails, calls or whatsoever. I really didn’t mean to leave you in the dark but I sadly had just NO TIME 🙁
Okay, that’s it for today 😎 I’m now going to enjoy the hopefully successful soccer game of Bremen against Athens and will afterwards celebrate the victory of Obama over McCain!
Take care, Philip
P.S.: Photos will be posted in the coming days – I promise ❗