Wah Lau Blog by Maik: Back To Life

(Figure 1: Reality shock, shows the disparity between aimed workload and bitter reality when writing a graduation thesis..everybody who as ever done a thesis should know exactly what I am referring to..)

Why?

Some time in November my diploma thesis opened up in Word 2003. She (of course female) was angry: 'Listen Maik, you want me to evolve in a beautiful way, see me flourish, thrive and prosper? Now, get DOWN AND DO IT!' The problem is (as laid out in Figure 1) there's always less time than work (same as there is always more month than money). And even IF there is enough time to conduct something as a thesis in 6 months, the typical student's brain seems to be conditioned to auto-compensate this overabundance of time by finding ever more elaborate ways to procrastinate. What happens? Acting busy and the unavoidable consequence of riding the angry blue curve above, whatever best intentions one might have had in the beginning (same as in the beginning of every semester anyways..).

Long story short: Made it, sent the final softcopy from Melbourne while I was already on leave, handed the Diplomarbeit in on time (thanks to the kind help Ronny and Sandy, who printed and handed it in for me in Dresden!!) and was awarded with 'Very Good' :-). A good end at last...but that's WHY I did not have the free brain capacity in November and December to produce anything on this page that would have made much sense..

When?

This first period of time in Singapore ended after a fantastic 14 months on Jan 3rd. Thesis finished (at least almost), future job in Munich mainly secured, I headed to a four week vacation in Asia and Oceania to finally touch down on Munich soil at the beginning of February...my new home for probably the next years. This week should see my first day at work and hopefully the signing of a rental contract for my own flat..

Where?

Time passes by more quickly than one can imagine...This is just a short roundup of what happened..There are many things to tell about places such as
- Jakarta (quite Indonesian..clubbing in the craziest, darkest, drug-infested places I have seen in my life, quite before the current devastating flood of course..)
- Krabi and Koh Phi Phi Island (Thailand..Krabi as an authentic Thai village, where one can have fun dancing with the locals and Koh Phi Phi as an outpost of the well-known looking English booze-machos and countless similar-and-sorry-but-boooring-looking blond Finnish girls..'The Beach' with Leo DiCaprio was shot there, by the way..)
- Macau and Hong Kong (where the Winter fashion somewhat seems to be to wear thick coats and flip-flops at the same time in the subway..a colorful combination that left my mouth wide-open when I saw it..)
- Melbourne (Australia, where we found out that there is a crossing between Kangaroos and Wallabies, called a Wallaroo!!)
- New Zealand (where the 2nd most favorite food in the world comes from ;-) See pic at the end!)
- Dubai (United Arab Emirates, where according to some friend's information 70% of all cranes in the world do their work right now...apparently a dubious number spread by the German Infotainment show 'Galilio', but the visual impression came close..)
- Paris (obviously France, where everything is so ridiculously expensive that you wonder how the normal Jacques-Le-Francais can afford his daily breakfast wine-shot..at least I did not suffer from the Paris-Syndrome!)
- Munich (where the public escalators in subway etc. are running at about 50% of Singaporean speed..and the request for spicy Chili sauce in a Burger King is greeted with the most repulsive look one can imagine..)

The blogs name has to change as well, I guess...

Maik