The Christmas holidays are near! But since it is so cold outside (luckily I went to work early this morning, before the snow set in to fall) I'd see us rather dreaming of a summer holiday. I think a new addition to the bookshelf will help Additional inspirational material after the break.

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Daily Life at 09:00 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Actually the topic is kind of crap, since I don't have a clue how gossip moved through Malaysia and transformed me into a football scout. But it probably all started with one kid, which called me in the middle of the night in the summer last year. I had trouble understanding his English, and agreed to talk back at a more reasonable time. A second call followed two days later in the early evening, but somehow our English didn't match that well, and all I could get was, that this kid seeked my help in some way. My natural response was to tell him to lay out his problems in a way I could understand his problems. Said and done - two weeks later I got mail, he layed out, that he was a very talented boy and seeked a chance to play football in Europe. I didn't have a clue how to react. Send him the addresses of local team? Ask him for more info? How did he think I in the world could help?
So at first I didn't react at all - I then got SMS of whether I was angry with him - I replied no, but that I didn't have a clue of how I could help him. But guess at this point I was not able to make clear, that I was no soccer scout - how could I make that clear without even knowing that I was supposed to be one. It took a few more weeks for me to realize my role, then I got frequent calls in the middle of the night, from people requesting me to scout them. At this point I stopped reacting to callers without proper caller-id, and set my phone to silent mode for those.

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Daily Life at 08:56 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

Initially this whole thing was about communicating from Malaysia to Germany, to get my pictures from overseas online and to create some persistent viewable memories. So I started this blog project as my personal Malaysia diary.

I did never question, whether this was the right medium to keep my friends up to date. Guess some would have been happier to get individual emails or some monthly emails with reports about what would be happening abroad. From my personal experience reading such emails, I had decided that at least for me those mails were rather inadequate. When you finally invest the time to read through such mostly long summaries, the events which are covered are already ancient. There are also so many topics covered, that you just don’t know what to say. And if you read such a complex work, you will feel obliged to write back something rather highly sophisticated. Using a blog, you will have more short postings, and there are chances, that some friends would just write something less sophisticated.

Meanwhile I have learned, that blogging enables to far more than just an easier way of communication with friends. Actually it is only suited for this communication if your friends are willing to go this way with you – they need to read the blog and need to comment. I had to make the experience that the first of these requirements can be achieved. It is just a little less convenient. Although your blog might give the reading person many more features than just a simple email it is less convenient. The reason is very understandable – you can’t just force somebody to visit your website, but you can demand that somebody reads your emails. Anyway, if someone cares he will take his time to have a look on your blog from time to time. But the second requirement – to get feedback via your blog from these friends is a really invincible obstacle. Until today the majority of my readers has reservations against commenting on my blog. The number of people commenting on my blog, who don’t own their own weblog moves against zero!

But there are other users that can be motivated to contribute to your blog – people just like yourself – fellow bloggers. Initially I had hoped, that I could keep contact to my friends from Malaysia with the help of my blog – but not all of my friends down there seem to care very much about my writings here. But due to my blog I got new friends in Malaysia – bloggers like me

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Things to know, Web-Site at 09:18 | Comments (8) | Trackbacks (0)

Today I installed a new version of Google Earth, and this time I was able to discover some familiar buildings in Malaysia. Not only the office building, where I used to work in PJ can now be found, even the swimming pool of my former condominum can be spotted. Very impressive!!

Posted by Jürgen Hösch in Lost and Found at 00:29 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0)