Soap bubbles I

Every semester thousands of first semester students and tourists fill the city of Heidelberg with recognizable looks of naive amazement…

I came to Heidelberg to study almost 5 years ago. Much has happened since those first days, which were spent running around through the city arranging all the essential things: bank account, visa, health insurance, etc.
One of those special days was the day I wanted to get my cell phone contract. I went to the main street of the Old Town ("Altstadt”) to look for the O2 shop, which I was told was somewhere in the main street ("Hauptstraße").


As every first semester student (or tourist) comes to know, Heidelberg has the longest continuous pedestrian shopping street in Europe.
Now I can say I know the approximate location of most of the shops. But back then I still had to concentrate and scan shop-for-shop, while walking down the street. After a while (1,6 km) I reached the end of it without finding the shop.

I went back (+1.6 km).

And started all over again (+ 1.6 km).

I ended walking up and down the street several times (+++km!) and at the end of the day I returned home exhausted and without my cell phone contract. However, 30 minutes later I had opened a contract online thanks to the wonderful world of the Internet: finding the 02 online store took me about 2 minutes (+ 0 km).

The cell phone came by mail and, completely pleased with the service, I forgot about my quest for the O2 shop in the Altstadt.

It was until a couple of months later that I saw it by chance: a distinctive blue shop with a gigantic O2 sign and cell phones displayed in the showcase.

A shop hard to miss.

Some happy children voices made me look the other way and then it became clear to me why I had failed to see the shop before: the building across the street had this big toy bear on the balcony, which was constantly making soap bubbles.

The bubbles kept floating all around the shops in the vicinity, attracting children, tourists and…first semester students (aka me).

It is easy to imagine my face of joy and amazement when finding myself surrounded by soap bubbles and the way I always looked up to watch where they were coming from (aka the bear) just in time to miss the O2 shop.


Every semester thousands of first semester students and tourists fill the city with those recognizable looks of naive amazement, but it’s actually no wonder when you think off all the amazing sights this city has to offer. After some months living in here, the routine settles, the city becomes part of the routine and the looks of amazement decrease.

There are only a few things left that make me look and smile that way now, but those soap bubbles are still one of them.

Politics and the ruining of my Olympic Games Vorfreude

“Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles”

[First fundamental principle of Olympism]

The time has come for me to write about politics. I’m not a political interested person: it’s mostly depressing to know what is happening in my country at the political level (and now more than ever) and when I hear about what goes on elsewhere in the world, it does not get any better. So it really pisses me of that I have to talk about them now.

Maybe that is why I get so angry about this whole Olympic Games Boycott and China/Tibet human rights violation scandal. It makes me mad that these political discussions have been the main topics in the media during this pre-Olympic time, which should be full with inspiring athletic performances and statements in preparation for the most important sports celebration. It makes me mad, that when I talk about some athletes trying to qualify to compete in China, the first comments I are about the possible boycott. It makes me mad, that the sports and the athletes are only in the background of what is considered their main spectacle.

Yes, I’m one of the naive persons, who believes in the Olympic spirit, lying above the political and social problems of the world.

Suddenly the Chinese regime violating human rights is the main media topic and the favorite issue to discuss and protest about. Of course I understand the Tibetans are taking advantage of the situation to talk about their cause. And it’s OK if the world has been enlightened and now wants to help/support the poor people, whose human rights are being violated: the task of raising awareness has been achieved. Now –please- be so kind and find another way to help these people, because attacking the athletes running with the Olympic torch is certainly not the optimal way to support the Tibet “pacifists”.

Politicians have found their own way and are starting to say they are not attending the opening ceremony of the Games to backup the “human rights” movements. Those are also news surrounding the Olympic games. But seriously, who cares about what politicians do in respect to the opening ceremony? What a lame an easy thing to do is to express their “humanity” and “correctness” in that way? The opening ceremony is not meant to be a spectacle for politics to get together; it’s meant to be the ceremony to announce the beginning of the Olympic games and again it is directed to the athletes and to the rest of us individuals and entities who are inspired by the values of Olympism. And I’m not asking for politicians to be inspired as well nor to understand and respect the Olympic spirit (although it would certainly be a better way to show their humanity); I’m just asking they let the athletes and the rest of us Olympic fans enjoy this time of expectation.

If the athletes decide not to attend the ceremony or the whole event because they consider that the political and social issues are more important than their training and preparation, it’s up to them. But really, how many of these athletes had heard about the problems in China and Tibet before? How many are saying they will show their support and their sympathy to Tibet just because it makes them better persons in the eyes of this media and political scandal?
It is expected from them, as country representatives, to be role models for society and show their support for human rights. I agree on the fact that athletes should be role models, but the fact that they can get together in harmony, respecting the fundamental values of fair play and healthy competition despite political, social and cultural differences, is what society should be looking up to.

I’m not an athlete, not anymore. But having grown up swimming and training surrounded with sports culture, I praise the Olympics Games.

So please, let me enjoy this time; let the athletes train without having to worry about what they should say about the political context of the Games and, last but not least, let the Chinese people show us how they can host this beautiful celebration magnificently.

Waiting for the yellow truck

“Vorfreude ist die schönste Freude”
"Anticipation is the greatest joy"
“La ilusion es la mayor alegria”

“Vorfreude” is a curious German noun and I don’t know if there’s another language, which has a word to express exactly that feeling. “Anticipation” is not quite right. LEO traduces it as “pleasant anticipation” in English, “ilusion” in Spanish and “pregustare” in Italian. I don’t know enough Italian to judge the correctness of this translation, but as well as the English word, the Spanish one does not express the same emotion as the German. Maybe it is the fact that the word joy (Freude) is actually part of the German word what makes the difference.

But despite that the exact word is missing in several languages, the concept of “Vorfreude” is global and easily pictured: the Christmas time and especially the advent calendar (which is also a German invention by the way…) are the most striking examples of “Vorfreude”: the joy in anticipating the Christmas festivities, the illusion of the presents or the exciting wait for Santa Claus to come in the morning.

Of course it is debatable if it is the greatest joy. All of us who like surprises (which by definition lack anticipation) can argue against it. I’ve already had that discussion with some German friends and we ended changing the saying to:

“Vorfreude ist auch eine Freude”
"Anticipation is also a joy"

And that is something I definitely agree with.

The other day I rediscovered this strange kind of joy while waiting for my new acquired lap top bag to arrive. I started to shop online through Amazon some years ago and quickly became addicted to it, particularly for buying books. Many may argue that online shopping lacks the excitement of actually going to the store, look around, search for the stuff, and so on.

But online shopping has one thing that normal shopping does not: Vorfreude!

After you buy your stuff, you have to wait for the postman to deliver it and those days are filled with that joyful anticipation. Every time I hear a truck parking in front of the building I run to the balcony hoping to see the yellow color of the DHL truck. And when it is there, the next seconds (in which I expect the doorbell to ring) contain the highest amount of concentrated "Vorfreude" I’ve experienced since opening my Christmas presents as a child.

It’s such a strong emotion, that maybe I should talk to my German friends again and return the saying to its original form…

How to kill an origami?

Tomoko Fuse once wrote some words about origami fate and how she sometimes burns origami that has proven “unsuccessful.” I’ve had a couple of unsuccessful encounters with unit origami myself, but most of those unfinished pieces ended in the paper trash, putting a little color into it after being crushed by my frustrated hands. But this piece was different. I was proud to have started to venture myself in the world of equilateral triangles, which are not easy units to fold. I had some difficulties at the beginning, but after figuring out how to fold them I constructed a piece with them. A cuboctahedoron, which looked pretty well but resulted very unstable. I started to replace some of the faulty pieces and ended replacing the entire set of triangles. But even then my cube wasn’t stable enough.

I forgot about it for some time, but today I started to join the pieces again while my code was compiling.

In the hope that a smaller and more compact geometry would be more stable, this time I just constructed an octahedron. But once again the units did not hold together stably. It would be difficult to find a better example of a truly “unsuccessful” origami and so just throwing it into the garbage would be somehow undignifying.

I went to the kitchen and got the matches, ready to enjoy the color flames promised by my book and remembering nostalgically my first inorganic chemistry practical course and the flame-tests bright colors.

However…my origami refused to go in flames the first time…and the second…and the third.

It even started to look more interesting, gaining some personality of its own by loosing its geometrical perfection (its apparent perfection of course…the lack of it was what started this whole thing on the first place).

After a while, the smoke was starting to kill me instead of the origami and I decided to stop and take the smoking octahedron to the balcony.

There it will rest and hopefully the rain or the snow will end with it soon, before I take it back and surrender to its imperfection and willingness to survive.

Or just another common tree?

How difficult can it be to find an original blog name available?

Very difficult... it seems.

As I was struggling to find an appealing name for my blog address and discovered that most of them were already taken, I confirmed that:

1. In the (Internet-) world, it is difficult (but hopefully not impossible) to stick out for your originality

And that:

2. Most of the blogs created are abandoned rapidly after a few entries.

So I'll spend my first post to wish this site a brighter and longer future.