1.) What is your name and where in the WWW (Whole Wide World) do you live?

Christoph: My name is Christoph Spiegl, I am located near Hof (Bavaria, Germany).

If you want to read the rest of the Inverview, visit SetupsAndSpaces.com.
It is mainly about my Desk and what I do at it but still.

There is something about partying that everybody wants to have: it is the engaging with people, being with somebody, meeting new people and having some fun. But I think it is interesting that different people like to party differently. I noticed that there is a big mass of people who like to party quiet similar: going out to a pub, the street, a bar or to a disco drinking alcohol and just having fun doing (mostly) silly stuff. Sometimes there are some serious conversations and there are people who say that while you are drunk the conversations are ‘deeper’ and more philosophically than without alcohol.

Since I don not drink any alcohol —I never drunk much and I have not drunk any, excluding the glass of champagne at new years eve, for over 5 years now— I have some different ides of party. At least the alcohol is one part of it. I am totally OK with other people partying with alcohol and I can have fun with many of them, the difference is just that I do not really enjoy it as much as I do other styles of ‘party’.

I have much more fun in joining together at home or a friends place and cooking dinner, grilling, playing board games or watching a movie, going to the cinema and sitting down afterwards at a nice bar to talk a little, going to a ‘real concert’ (not a cover band) or going on a trip together to another city where an event is taking place.

I understand that it is different but at the same time it is the same. Everybody wants to interact with other people. The once go out to a disco, others go to restaurants and I have my preferences. The only thing thats a little hard about it is to find the people who enjoy the same as you do. For many its easy cause they like the same as most do but for some others it is not that easy cause they like something different than the mass of our population.

It is kinda like with the career —I already wrote about it—: do you have to fit one hole or can you dig your own and others join you, can you take the smaller hole where less people are digging or do you have to dig where everybody else is digging. I would say you can go your own way but most of the time you have to be prepared to be alone for quiet some time and push yourself a little to at least get to know others at ‘normal’ party places.

One more step in my life is finished. The final exam of this years school. The marks are not that bad and I am OK with the results. Now one more year and than I am done with ‘normal’ school. But that brings up the question what to do after. That is what I am going to think about the next time and especially the question if it is necessary to go to University or not. I hope there will be an answer because I am going to do this research in the course of a term paper.

So people lets go. Lets do this and get it done! The question is good. The answer unknown.

Update:
Ok, the subject of the term paper changed due to the problem that I noticed that it would be pretty hard to get something scientific about this school question. There are many great resources where you can look at but nothing a teacher at my school would count as scientifically usable material. Now the subject of the term paper will be Socially Responsible Investment as Demonstrated by Micro-Financing. It is also a subject I already worked on, am personally interested in and have lots of books about. Now I just need to work it out properly!

I am back to school for three weeks. I wonder when I would have some vacation. Ok Valencia was some kind of vacation. But still I had school there. And I am back to school now. And than I need to write the scientific essay in my summer holiday.

All that is pretty hard. But I kind a like it hard. Keeping my self busy.

Well I am pretty good at doing stuff which is not productive — also refereed to as procrastination. But that is for sure one of the worst things todo! And me — and you — should focus on getting procrastination out of our life’s!

One thing I like to do if I procrastinate is shopping online. Just looking at things I could buy — which are most likely to be expensive toys for my camera gear or a new MacBook — but don’t need right now. I could also use that time to just go out shoot some nice photographs and get better with the gear I already own — which is pretty massive. Or I could study for school which would probably be a important thing todo.

In the end I think I have many problems in my time management. I am a bit unfocused and can procrastinate very well. But lately I am getting better in focusing and just ‘doing’ stuff — even if I am scared of it, which is if I need to write an email to somebody I do not really know. I just need to say: 10 Minutes and I need to have this ready. And that works most of the time!

One problem I experienced over the past and am noticing more and more is that people do not care for each other. They are just interested in their own best. That is for politicians here in germany — who are just looking at the next election and do not want to take any hard decisions because it could harm their next election score as well as for the business man (especially managers) who are just interested in earning as much as possible but nobody cares about how they make the money.

There are a few people on this planet who do care, who are active in changing the world and who are really concerned about how other people life.

I am not going to say that I do all this better than anybody else. I just say that it is possible to care! And it is has to be possible to get rich and still care!

Maybe you care? Than this site is for you: AIDvertisement.net

For this year, the last exam test is today! After that I am leaving for 3 weeks to travel to Spain and attend a language school.

I hope that I will be able to post from there. If not, there are already some posts online to be published over the next 3 weeks.

I am going to have some fun!

Yesterday was the first, today the second and on Thursday and Friday are the next two exams. After this tests I will hopefully receive the ‘Fachabitur’ (in English this is probably translated: technical diploma, but I am not sure about that).

Wish me luck, I really need some!

Here is a fact about me: I live in a small village near a — even smaller — town. And I am not exactly sure how to think about this because I think of it in two different ways.

The first thought is: I really love it to be able to look out of a window and see all the green around our house. The air and the fields.

But all this is not everything. There are many things about it which are not that nice. For instance I have this ‘how do I come to school‘ problem. And not just that distances generally are a problem.

The next problem I encounter is that here are many people who do not fit my thinking. I differ a lot. And I had some problems throughout my childhood what did not make it any easier!

Probably the last thing I would like to mention is the fact that you meet just very few people who do the same you do. For me that is photography, social-networking, web-development and all this new media stuff. On one hand this is great because I have less competition, on the other hand it is bad because I have nobody to talk to about my professions and this leads to the problem that it is hard for me to evolve!

One thing I think can change all this is the idea of traveling more. I plan to do that more over the next year and further. I plan on visiting people I met somewhere and never saw since. I plan on attending meet-ups and congresses / camps around my town — not just the once which are 10km away but also the once which are 100km and more away!

What do you think about this idea? How do you solve such problems or don’t you have any of those?

I have my license to drive for about one and a half year now. Still I do not own a own car and I am not driving to school each and every day. There are two different kinds of opinions I experienced with this and this post is about the two.

One thing most people I know think of if it comes to cars, the license to drive them and the first time to own one is that they are no longer bond to their parents or public transport. They can drive wherever and whenever they want. One effect by that is: they turn 18 either already have their license or are currently trying to get it — and immediately after this they go and buy a car — some even get the car before the they are allowed to drive on their own. After having a car the next thing to do is to drive it, right? Well they do that. They got the car (are not earning any money) but drive to school every morning. Well I can understand that because most of those who do this have either some people to drive with (carpool like) and/or they would have to wait really long to get home by public transport.

Most of this arguments are correct and I understand them but maybe I need to describe my situation first. I already did this in a Linked List post titled Drive or Not to Drive but here again: I have a way to and from school which is with the train and takes about 45 minutes. Most of the days schools over at 2:35 PM which means I can not take the train at 2:41 PM because the way to the train-station is a bit to long to get down in under 6 minutes. So I end up waiting at school for about a hour and than drive home 45 minutes!

Isn’t that crazy?! What a waist of time! Why don’t you drive? You could lave about one and a half hour!

That should describe the looks I get if I tell someone. And they are right. It is kinda crazy and kinda unusual. Who wants to spend 2.5 hours of his day waiting or doing something useless? Well I do not think so. Sure I do complain about it often but most of the time I take it as a positive thing. I do not want to change it for numerous reasons. First of all I mostly enjoy the time. I take a book with me nearly every day and that 2.5 hours is the time I managed to read all the books I managed to read till now — which I never was able to manage to do. The hour in the morning often is great to be used to get some homework done or to study for a test or pop quiz. And one side effect is that I do harm the environment a little less.

But over all the most important aspect is that I slow down. I have time to think and concentrate. I have time to brainstorm ideas and lose my head about something I really like thinking about (or to make up some new ideas for blogposts). I would like to end this with a quote by James Shelley which I think puts it just right:

When I slowed down, I suddenly noticed that I was … living. When in a state of constant motion, the soul is often neglected for the other more “pressing” matters of life, that somehow serve as the ultimate distraction to recognizing your own, living consciousness. In other words, we’re too busy doing stuff to ever actually be alive.

~ James Shelley