It's About Time

I've always had a hard time with external forces structuring my time.

Apprehension shadows every minute when an appointment looms.

When there is nothing required of me, I am at peace. Relaxed.

But I've come to Germany,  to the land of structure.

You're not allowed to take a shower after 11.

You can't do the laundry after 9.

So when in Germany,

You do as the

Germans

do?

Now it

seems that

the time is here

to make my schedule.

Each morning I'll wake up

about 10 A.M. I will start my day.

Eat some breakfast, go for a walk, stretch.

Two hours of poker, snack, yoga, then more poker.

Four days per week, it's off to the gym for serious exercise.

Kettlebells and free weights, then kick and punch the heavy bag.

Dinner, then grind more hands and words. Much work. It's about time.

Out of the Clouds

I’ve been in Germany for a solid week now, and despite all the novelty – new language, caramel soy pudding – the time has flown by. It took a few days to get some poker sites set up, and I’ve yet to play a substantial number of hands. It’s time for that to change.

That’s not to say I haven’t been working. I’ve drafted an ambitious year-long plan, worked on my flash fiction project, and finished up my Poker Player Bill of Rights. But it’s time to get my grind on. Head out of the clouds, feet on the ground running. Running good, I hope.

German Soy Pudding

After mixed success on the soy milk front, I decided to brave the soy pudding frontier. As you can see, I went a bit overboard and bought all four varieties. Again the results were mixed. The vanilla is mediocre, the dark chocolate is decent to good, the "milk" chocolate is very good, and the caramel ist die Bombe! This may be my lack of recent sugar intake speaking, but it's one of the best puddings I've ever had.

German vegan tip of the day: look for food with the 100% pflanzlich symbol. All plant, all the time. Unfortunately, it's found almost exclusively on soy goodies, but that's a good enough place to start.

This will be my last food blog for a little while. I've got a big piece coming out on pokerfuse tomorrow, and I'm getting some poker sites up and running. More on that soon.

Soya Milch

Quick update on the German soy milk front: The banana soy milk is awesome. The chocolate soy milk as well. The plain...well, let's just say I can see why soy milk is not a heavily consumed product in Germany. Yikes! It's time to try another brand.

On a more positive note, I managed to find seitan, soy yogurt, soy cheese, and blocks of tofu. Last night I fried up some seitan with fresh onion, peppers, garlic and ginger for a hearty vegan meal. Right now I'm trying to force down the soy milk for some protein, but I may relent, take the loss, and buy some more of the banana variety.

Ich Bin Strikter Vegetarier

Well, that's what Google Translate tells me, anyway. On Day 2 of my journey, I did a little language research to prepare for the supermarket. It turns out there are a decent number of soy products, including banana soy milk! It's quite tasty. I'll buy some seitan and soysages tomorrow. Sadly, I haven't found any black beans. They're all kidney and baked beans, and all with sugar added. But I got a nice bag of apples for only .99€. The euro is losing steam on the dollar, so my money's going a bit further than I'd anticipated.

My attempts at opening a local bank account were thwarted by my lack of registered address here. I'll try again tomorrow at HSBC, which advertises exceptional service for expats. Hopefully sleep will come for me now and erase the insomnia of yesterday.

Welcome to Düsseldorf

I've arrived in Hamburg without incident. New Year's on a plane was frightfully uneventful. I can't decide whether the highlight was when they gave us champagne and people arbitrarily clinked glasses (even more arbitrarily than normal, since it was 11:37 somewhere and 12:37 somewhere else), or when midnight EST passed and no one blinked. But my personal highlight was going through immigration in Düsseldorf.

"What is the purpose of your visit?" the stone-faced officer asked.

"To visit friends and to see Europe," I answered.

"How long would you like to stay?"

"89 days."

He looked up from my brand-new empty passport, then back down at my passport and leafed through it disdainfully. It felt like five minutes before he spoke again.

"So you've never been here before?"

"No, well, not since I was three."

"I see...and how many dollars do you have with you?"

Now, if this was New York, I'd assume it was a mugging attempt. But this is a common immigration question and I was prepared.

"Two thousand in cash, and another ten thousand in the bank." Hopefully not too much and not too little.

"And you can take a long vacation from work like this?"

"I'm a writer, so I don't have to be at home to get work done."

He nodded his approval and turbo-stamped my passport.

"Enjoy your stay."

So I think I found the magic answer to getting approved for a 90-day visa. Have money and be a writer.

Happy New Year!

Well, I've managed to pack my life into a backpack and one carry on suitcase. Truth be told, most of my "possessions" are now squirreled away on a 2 terabyte external hard drive. The physical items amount to little more than shirts and socks.

I'm curious to see what New Year's Eve looks like on a plane. Do people celebrate on New Year's of the place they left? The place they're going? It will already be 12:30 on January 1st in Germany when my plane debarks. Or do we go by the time zone we're flying through? It would be entirely possible to miss the whole countdown nonsense this way, since it could be 11:30 PM, then we hit a time zone change and it clicks over to 12:30 AM. I'm kind of pulling for that result.

I'll have a full report filed here by the end of January 1st, assuming all goes smoothly. Of course, my January 1st will end 6 hours before New York January 1st. So I like to see it as travelling to the future.

24 Hours

In 24 hours I'll be sitting on a plane sitting on the tarmac, waiting for takeoff. I have a list with 25 checkboxes, and only about 7 of them are checked off. So why am I sitting here writing instead of cleaning, packing, or nailing cords into the wall? For one, so I can check another box off on my list. But more precisely, because I said I would.

The funny thing about writing is that most of it isn't that good. I don't have any profound thoughts right now that deserve to be saved for posterity. But I said I'd write every day so I'm forcing myself to do it. Unsurprisingly, it's coming out forced. But the goal is to establish habit, and in the creation of good habits, there may be a little collateral damage.

A more profound blog may have had something to do with writing a letter to my friend who's in prison for poker-related activities, whereas I'm entering something like exile in order to play online poker. But as I move away from poker, that parallel seems less profound. There's a tiny part of me that hopes I won't get those Euro-sites set up, and I'll be forced to just write for 3 months. Doing nothing but writing might lead to some forced material over that time, but I think it would lead to some great stuff as well.

Stuff

Stuff. There's always more of it. That's one thing I rediscover every time I move. There's always more stuff.

Some of it is in the form of physical possessions, though I've done a decent job of whittling those down to the essentials, plus some keepsakes. Okay, plus some crap I just didn't have time to go through. And that's because there's so much of it!

But there's also stuff to do. Make sure I have everything. Clothes, electronics, food for travel, tax information for next year. I've done my research, but there's always more things to think of. At this point, I hope anything that I haven't thought of yet is just not that important, or I would have needed it by now. It's not like I'm going to get to the airport and say, "My passport! That's what I forgot!"

No, it's going to be something like a USB cable for my phone. I'm pretty sure it won't be that, though, because I'm not taking my phone.

Gifts From The Dead

I’m leaving my homeland on Saturday night, spending the year abroad. Hamburg, Soderhamn, London, then expedia knows where. I don’t self-identify as an American, even if I am quintessentially so. But I am interested in being a citizen of the world, seeing the sights, learning the language.

In the process of putting my affairs in order, I’ve divested myself of the majority of my worldly possessions. Ideally, I’d like to own only what I can carry, but I have this really cool sword, and I don’t want to cause a scene going through airport security. So I’ve kept a few things at home.

Throwing things away is a difficult process, empowering as well. But how do you cast off gifts from the dead? So many of my belongings were presents from those no longer present. I can’t say I’ve discarded those as ruthlessly as I intended. But the greatest gifts from the dead are not things, but memories. And those I hope I never let go.

I ♥ NY

New York is the Greatest City in the World. I say this not out of any disrespect to other cities. Sure, there are bigger cities, and yes, there are friendlier cities. And god knows there are cleaner cities. But nowhere in the world are more languages spoken, more cultures mingled, or more stereotypes debunked.

I used to love New York in an elitist way. I kind of thought everywhere else sucked, and The City (ah...my The City) was just better. But I had it backwards. What makes The City great is all the good things from cities around the world, and maybe some of the bad things too. It's not all here, but in one form or another, most of it is. And that's why this will always be my home, no matter where I am.

On that note, my New Year's countdown starts tomorrow at 10. That's 10 days until I leave New York, New York, and America for the better part of next year. I'm going to Germany, then Sweden, then the UK, then who knows where else. It should be an exciting journey, seeing some of my roots and some of my city's roots. Fragments of those places are found here, but I want to see the source.

I'll leave you with the following clip, the most stirring performance of The City's municipal anthem: