New doorbell sign

After having to verbally tear some guy a new rear-opening when he was trying to collect money for something as the wife and both kids were sleeping (doorbell was off, so he knocked loudly), we decided to be fair and warn them with a new sign for our doorbell:

Translation:

Advertising / Sales, propaganda and fundraising prohibited.

Offense punishable by verbal humiliation.

The Owner

I am (nearly), you (might be), we (possibly) are Australian

The long running saga of my Australian citizenship is finally drawing to a close *touch wood*.

This has been going on for so long, it's hard to remember when it started. Early 2008 according to this blog, when a change to the rules in Germany allowed on to apply for the permission to keep ones German citizenship while applying for a citizenship of another country,  known simply in German as a Beibehaltungsgenehmigung. My application for this document was true bureaucratic torture at its finest. Before being allowed to keep my German citizenship, I had to prove that I had German citizenship. A G|erman passport and birth certificate are not sufficient proof. Rather the following elaborate method was followed:

• For me to be German, one of my parents had to be German at the time of my birth. But...
• For my mother to be German, her father had to be German at the time of her birth, but...
• For that to work his father at the time of his birth
• and so on! For a total of 4 or 5 generations.

After some haggling, pointing out there was a small war or three in this time frame which may have caused some records to be lost, I was allowed to cut it back to just up to my grandfather. Then you had to supply all of the addresses where they lived and a raft of other things.

So after all of that, my application for a Beibehaltungsgenehmigung from within Germany was denied by the Ministry of Sport and Other Irrelevant Topics, where one must send the application. But they did give me a nice certificate saying that I most definitely am German. Thanks for the fish!

Disheartened by the whole process I gave it up again until we were in Australia, where I handed basically the same application in via the German embassy in Melbourne. They were quite happy with my passport and birth certificate as proof that I was German, sent my application to a central processing point in Köln where they deal exclusively with these applications only to have it approved a couple around the middle of 2011.

With the clock ticking, as the Beibehaltungsgenehmigung is only valid fo two years, I did what every good Australian would do - ignored the whole thing for a while again.

With my Australian PR Visa expiring in April 2012 I finally got a move on with the application for Australian citizenship in Oct. 2011.

Several months of waiting, plus a lot of backwards and forwards with documents *thanks mum! goes by. 

A few weeks ago I was invited to the Australian embassy in Berlin to do the citizenship test. Upon arrival I met with two very Australian ladies, whom one would never do the disservice of mistaking for a diplomat - even though one of them was apparently. They both looked more like someone's mum. I was the first to do the test in it's computerised form at the embassy, so they showed me how to use the mouse and forced me to to the tutorial *grumbles*. Then they left the room with strict instructions to get them if there were any problems, or once I had finished, as they wanted to see what happened when someone submitted the results.

4 minutes later I knock on the window and say I'm done, they're a bit confused and it takes another few minutes for me to explain that no there is no problem and that yes I've done all 20 multiple choice questions. I've checked the answers twice and would they like me to sing the 2nd but cancelled verse of the Australian national anthem where Britannia rules the waves? At that point I finally got the message across, they proceeded to let me click submit, they took a quick printout of my 100% score (the answers were all 'B' as always) and send me on my way - just as the power went out in the embassy *sigh*.

Turns out the test results made it out before the power failure and yesterday I received a notice confirming that my application has been approved, but that I'll need to wait to be contacted by the Australian Embassy in Berlin to arrange a day for the oath* and ceremony.

So please keep your fingers crossed that this will be over soon, and that I can finally call myself an Australian!

Update: Recently I attended my citizenship ceremony at the Australian Embassy in Berlin. It was a low key affair with only one other person taking the pledge. Afterwards we had tea and biscuits in the conference room. We got to look at a book with old photos of the Embassy - like much of the rest of Berlin, this building was at one point in time a Naziparty office and later on a Communistparty office. The cool bit - you can still see the marks where they've pried the swastikas from the walls. I'll try and put up some photos when I feel more inspired.

A nice lady from the Embassy called the other day and I got to go down there and collect my certificate and a voter registration form.

As of the 1st of June 2012 I am official an Australian citizen. 

I've let the German officials know too, so its all hunky dory and official.
All I have to do now is fork out some more cash for an Australian passport, but I think I'll put that off while my PR Visa is still valid and / or we have no immediate trip plans.

How to motivate your employees

My boss is a bit notorious for not having great interpersonal skills with his employees. He likes to go off at them whenever he feels like it and blame is usually more important than a solution. So with that background information on to the story.

We have a major project due (actually it's nearly over now, again, and again... *sigh will it ever die). On the day before one of the final meetings with the customers my boss calls me into his office to discuss a few things that are still open. The conversation is fine until we get to the point where he says "You look a bit stressed today Jack". Quite frankly I was stunned - he'd just shown that he was capable of empathy. Thankfully before I could say much he followed it up with "So I'm worried that you wont do everything properly for tomorrow". pow A perfect knockout - this naturally didn't make me feel any better but it did confirm that the world was still spinning correctly on its axis.

Voting in Russia

Seems like the last post on this blog was exactly a month ago. Right now the three of us are in Novosibirsk until middle of March for Mum's 60th birthday. Today Dad, Mum and I went to vote. I even got an Открепительный Талон (a piece of paper that says I can vote anywhere without registration) from my local Russian embassy in Berlin (an amusing and usually painful process that took about an hour of my life) as I am not registered in Russia and don't have a local inside passport. Russia has a silly two passport system, which is a leftover from the good old Soviet days, with the local passport being used for things like pension, work, registration and the outside passport used to travel abroad.

So with my outside passport and this special piece of paper I went in the election poll to try and get a ballot paper. The woman at the poll doesn't want to give it to me as I give her my outside passport. The following conversation occurs:

she nodding her head - "You need an inside passport to vote"
me - "Look at the piece of paper - it's from a Russian embassy in Berlin"
she - "Yeah ok, but ... hmm... what citizenship do you have?"
me - "You're holding my passport - it's a passport of a citizen of Russian Federation"
she - "Yeah... hmmm... hold on, I need to get the chairwoman"
..... chairwoman arrives and takes a look at my passport...
chairwoman - "You can't vote with an outside passport"
me - "Look at the piece of paper - it's from the Russian embassy in Berlin"
chairwoman - "Oh ok. Hmmm... why didn't you vote there?"
me - questioning look
chairwoman - "Oh right - you're here right now for the election. Hmm... that is a bit of a stupid question, right?"
me - confirming look

Then they issued me the ballot paper. As Putin promised the election poll had a webcam installed and the urns were transparent. Dad said that all the ballots he could see inside the urn were for Putin. No surprise there. According to his official propaganda he only has a mere 17 million roubles in the banks. And according to exit polls he's getting about 60% of votes already. *sigh*

To Fair Vote in Russia!

Today there were mass protests in Russia against Putin and for fair presidential vote on the 4th of March. Here in Berlin there was also a little demonstration where we took part with Sveta and Kolya. Timmy and I even made a banner - our first for any demo so far. As it happened, it was by far the biggest banner and certainly one of the most popular. We had people come up to us asking to take photos with our banner and also people taking photos of the banner itself. It read "Путин В.В.ОН!" meaning "Putin go away!". According to a local newspaper there were around 200 people demonstrating. In Moscow anywhere between 30 000 and 120 000 depending on whether you believe the government or opposition. Either way - it's great that people are finally getting tired of simply being cattle and making their voice heard!

A bit of national pride

Read yesterday that Russian Transaero Airlines is actually one of the 20 safest airlines in the world. It's even safer than easyJet, which has 19th place, compared to Transaero that's 15th. Aeroflot and S7 (Sibir) I imagine are nowhere close up there, but at least both Lufthansa and AirBerlin are.

Booyah!

0 unanswered emails in my Inbox. That's what I call dealing with one's new year resolutions! I think this is the first time since a very very very long time... may be years? Now I just need to keep it up :)

Absurdity in boxes or "look who's stupid"

A week ago our (almost) last things arrived from Australia being a total of 3 pallets = 5 cubic meters. All this assortment packed in about 70 boxes. Joy! For a few days this pile has taken a life of it's own because we couldn't really believe that we shipped so much crap. And crap it really is... at least say 70% of it. Jack and I kept looking at each other in disbelief that we really did send all this stuff and it really is here now, and is really taking up A LOT of space in our already full-of-stuff apartment.

Now when we were going through our things in March back in Melbourne we did get rid of a lot of things. But clearly not enough. And the main problem then was that we a) had limited time to sort through things, b) were sick of sorting through things over and over and over again (which is probably the most important point here). To illustrate the full absurdity of the kinds of things we packed (for reasons refer to point B of the previous sentence):

- empty half broken CD cases
- tiny ripped bits of fabric that I kept from my good old sewing days at school when I cherished (hoarded) anything and everything I had following the whole Soviet experience
- cups with IBM logos on them
- old floor towels
- an assortment of shoe polish brushes

But none of these demonstrates this absurdity more than the following conversation that we've had back in March and the result thereof.

Jack (as we're packing these said boxes): "You're not seriously going to take this stone with you?" (pointing at a big stone that I used as paperweight on my desk)
me: "Well... containers go by volume, not weight, right? So why not - I like this stone."
Jack: "Fine! Then I'm taking my stone, too!!!" (he also has a big stone that he used as a paperweight).

Yes - we shipped these two stones from Australia! At least Jack can remember the significance of his and where he found it. Mine? I think it might be from the Grampians but really - it's just a big grey stone... and now overnight they have become a lot more famous and valuable for travelling across the globe. Now these stones are trying to find a respectable place in the PILE of stuff that is our current flat and I am glad I want to become a psychologist, because the human psyche is one deep, dark, absurd abyss!!!

Got ink?

I do!

before...

the design...



during healing...

after (almost finished... still have to get a few ink-free spots filled in)...

Spending the end of summer in Siberia

After my 30th birthday (an extensive account of which is still to make an appearance on this blog) Timmy, myself, my parents (who were a BIG surprise for my b'day), my brother Gleb and his g/f Nastya all together flew to Novosibirsk. Sadly Jack used up his leave on our Aus trip this year and couldn't come with us :( Timmy and I are here for 3 weeks until the 11th of Sept. The flight was just awesome and on it I realised that it was the first time I was on a plane with both my parents since our immigration to Australia in 1994! Only some 17 years ago!

Anyhoo... the flight was great. We ended up taking a "Child" taxi from the airport with a proper baby seat, which made me very happy and are all now completely relaxing. Mum and Dad are taking Tim for walks... we visit our wonderful relies, I'm eating Sushki (hard Russian round bread-like things) and reading 'Dracula'. What could be better?!

The first few days after we arrived I got reminded of the good old soviet days as there was no warm water. But Tim and I held out showering or bathing for three days and all was fine!

Two big events occurred on the weekend in Tim's life - 1) on the evening of 27th of August he took his very first three steps by himself, and 2) on the morning of 28th of August we discovered his next 8th tooth! He adjusted to the 5 hour time difference very very well and is his happy and babbly self.

As we took a bus on Sunday with Mum to go to the gallery I could add some of the amusing bus sayings to my collection:

"Ни одна зубная паста не сохранит ваших зубы так, как вовремя оплаченый проезд" (No toothpaste will save your teeth as well, as a timely paid bus fare)
"Крупные деньги не давать - сдачу не унесешь!" (Do not give large money notes - you won't be able to carry the change!)
"Заранее просим прощения за тряску, толчки и другие прелести езды по нашему городу" (We'd like to apologise in advance for bumps, shaking and other wonders of riding in our city)
"Хочешь жить? Не отвлекай водителя!" (Want to live? Don't disturb the driver!)

And a few I made while walking around:

"Russians don't drink!" (written with a mistake)

"The stars and Vladimir Putin against drugs! Boys! You don't need them!"

Social advertising - the bottle is hitch-hiking to the rubbish bin :)

The amazing rapidly expanding wallet of the Russian Embassy

Jack and I went to the wonderful Russian Embassy today to see my most hated person in the world - the notary woman. As Timmy and I will be flying to Novosibirsk in August, Jack needed to make a power of attorney that says he lets me take our child on this trip without him. Easy enough. I called about two months ago to make an appointment and over the phone asked how much this document will cost - 7.50 EUR I was told. So far so good. I called again this Monday as I had to double check the required documents and also asked about the price... it has gone up by 50 cents - 8.00 EUR. This morning when we were actually at the notary counter she gave us a receipt that we had to pay at the payment office - Kasse (super efficient Russian queuing system where if you haven't queued at least four times at an official building they don't feel that they have done their job properly)... anyway the receipt already said - 10 EUR (so it's gone up 2 euros in five days - I think it's her private "retirement fund" fee). Finally as we were queuing at the Kasse the price gone up again another euro, because they don't take cash (unless it's below 15 EUR and only for pension inquiries), so you have to pay by credit card or EFTPOS and you don't have a choice but pay one euro on all transactions! So all in all - 11 EUR!

NB: Actually after writing this post I went onto the website of the embassy and discovered that the reason for this increase is that there are different prices depending on the person's nationality. Germans have to pay in some cases double what the Russians have to pay for the same services. So if I had to do the power of attorney I'd pay only 7.50, but because Jack had to do it, he had to pay 10 EUR! I guess it's only fair (????????)

Random Easter Monday fact

There are precisely two male midwives in the whole of Germany.

It's a small world

Today the postie came by with various parcels. He is our regular one and has been bringing us post for a while. One of the parcels today was covered in many many stamps from Mum with Russian books for Timmy. As the postie was handing me the parcel he said that it was a very interesting one from Russia, so I replied that it was from my Mum with books for the baby. He then asked me whether I spoke Russian, so I replied that I do. He then started talking to me in Russian and turns out that he is also from Novosibirsk. Well technically from Berdsk - a town not far from Novosibirsk. So then we laughed at the fact that this is one very small world indeed. This guy has been bringing our post for many years now and I would never have picked him to be Russian, let alone from the same town as me!

The "Turkish Man" rant

I wanted to rant about this for a while, but somehow never got around to it.

Next door in front of the supermarket there's a fruit and veg stand. It's run by a Turkish guy and his family. We used to buy fruit from him quite a bit, but now I have an anti-obsession with him and avoid him at all costs. It gets to the point, where I don't go shopping to this supermarket, just to avoid him. Or take a longer way around the back of the supermarket, just not to go past him, if I have to walk in that direction. Why, might you ask? Well, he has one of these super friendly southern personalities - where he likes to ask about the health and wealth of all your extended family and then your dog, too. This is fine - as in, being born and raised at least partially in the Soviet Union I am somewhat reluctant "giving out" such personal information, but I've gotten used to that over the years and generally even cringingly find it OK.

However, since I've gotten pregnant, this personal boundary has shifted somewhat to be (at least in my mind) much more on the personal side. Thus when he saw me with a belly in April this year he started commenting how it's great that we're finally decided to reproduce and that I don't look fat at all. Great! Then he proceeded to tell me about the marvels and wonders of large exercise balls, as good means to practice for labour, and tried to demonstrate on a chair where he was sitting at the time. Anyhoo... he's just being friendly, I thought.

Then, after Tim was born I went to get some fruit and he started asking me how motherhood is - whether it's the most amazing thing, and how do I really feel about my baby, and how do I feel about having so much more responsibility, and whether I am ecstatic about being a mother. Now, I don't know about you, but I prefer to keep my "business" relationships business and private - private. I have nothing against talking with a man next door about the weather, but about my feelings of being a mother?! Please!!! I don't talk about that with myself - let alone a fruit and veg dude! Seriously!!!

So it was from that point onwards that my active avoidance of him began. It got to a point where I think he realised that I'm avoiding him, because even when he'd say hi as I was running past, I'd just quickly say hi back and go by without stopping for a chat. I stopped buying fruit there and Jack had to humour me and walk the longer way around so that we would avoid "the Turkish man".

A couple of times recently Jack and I shopped there together (with me kind of hiding behind Jack to avoid too much of a conversation) and that seemed to be ok... so this Friday when it was raining and I really couldn't be bothered taking the long way around and actually wanted to buy some fruit, I decided to try it once again. I was not disappointed. Not only did he once again ask me about my Mum and whether she's still here visiting, and then again if I totally love being a mother myself and also how is my baby, but also pointed at my belly and asked if there's another one on the way already, and when I replied with a 'no', he was very surprised and I think disappointed and said that well he guesses there's no rush. At that point I was very happy to take my fruit and go away.

Jack really doesn't seem to have this problem with him, but then I guess Jack doesn't get pregnant. So is it just me and my Soviet super secret upbringing that makes me feel uncomfortable about it, or would others feel this to be a bit too far on the personal side?

Boys keep marriages together?

anInteresting article... Do Daughters Cause Divorce?

Need to read more on the topic to be able to actually form an opinion, but if the statistic is true (parents of 3 girls and 10% more likely to divorce, than parents of 3 boys)... it would be interesting to know why.

The labour of the Russian Embassy

Yesterday (due to the most silly decision of mine to make an appointment on my birthday) Jack and I went to the Russian Embassy. It was terrible... we didn't achieve anything apart from me storming out of there and then bawling my eyes out for about 30 mins outside (long story). But while we were in there I realised that there are a lot of parallels between being in the Russian Embassy and giving birth - both are extremely painful, you're never quite sure how long it'll take, you feel like screaming (and possibly do) and you're never quite sure about what will turn out in the end of this drawn out process.

Eight weeks - 56 days

Weight and length progress for this week as of Tuesday - 5050kgs and 58cm. Tuesday was also the last visit from our wonderful midwife. She has been so very helpful and without her I think things would have been a lot harder. She's very down to earth with very relaxed attitude and has been very supportive and giving very good advice. I feel like she almost became a family member. We're really going to miss her.

This week Timmy started grabbing things. Mainly he grabs his favourite toy, which is a wooden ring with a cat head on top. It hangs off his wooden stand thingie. He's been able to push hanging toys for a while, but this week for the first time he's actually managed to grab it. Every time he does it, he gets really really happy by smiling a lot and wiggling his little hands and feet.

One thing that seems to happening regularly these days (probably mainly due to lack of sleep, although two nights ago was the new record of 7.5hrs) is that Jack and Tim take naps during the day, which always makes me smile...

On Thursday we went to the Botanical Gardens. From us it's a direct trip on the bus and took about 40 mins. It was the first time we went there and it was a welcome change to our usual walk around our area. The park is pretty big and very well maintained. Flower beds have various colourful patterns, all plants are marked with Latin names and even the rubbish bins have been jokingly marked in Latin to the tune of "Papyrus Antiqus". One slightly disappointing thing was that we couldn't use our picnic rugs and sit on the grass, because there are apparently 80 different species of grass that are very sensitive to treadling. This fact made us wonder how the grass is mowed and Jack concluded that they must have special helicopter lawn mowers that sort of hover above the grass without touching the ground. So instead we stopped to sit down on one of the numerous shady benches for Tim's lunchtime feed. There we were immediately surrounded by tiny birds, a very friendly squirrel and a shy little mouse all wanting a treat. We couldn't resist and fed them a little bit of bread. Next time we'd like to go to the big glass houses that should have some interesting plants, but it seems that one can't take a pram inside, so we'd have to come slightly less packed.

Some photos from another walk this week...

~~~~~~~~~~

In non baby related news, this week I discovered my new favourite shop for summer dresses - Desigual. I can't believe I didn't know about it until now, because it is so me! All clothes are so colourful and with interesting patterns. Trust the Spanish to come up with it.

Oh, and just in case anyone was wondering how long a closed plastic jar of honey can remain cooking in a microwave prior to exploding, it's exactly 5 minutes :)

Go Julia Gillard!!!

Random stuff

I've been cleaning out my phone so here's some random photos from the past 18 months or so, enjoy.

Some handy tips on how to work the new family member just arrived - thanks Lads ;)

We went and spent a bit of cash recently, shiny new Canon EOS 50D, 50mm f1.4, 17-85mm f4.5-5.6 and 70-300mm f4.5-5.6. Just gotta work out what all the buttons do now ;-)

Banjo playing shadow puppets, he's convinced his shadow is another cat and keeps trying to reach it.

Do philosophers value function over form?

Who needs a fishing hook, just scoop - these fish seemed to be swimming through each other rather than through water:

Pearl Jam concert last summer - where Gomez was the support act - totally awesome. I have some videos to post when I get around to it too.

Random Berlin:

That's just wrong and so very wrong...

Honest I am neither breaking, nor entering. This is what happens when someone forgets the keys to a secure storage area, mental note - cages should go to the ceiling.

There's cool and then there's disco cool:

That's one dark beverage:

The different faces of Wifey:

Egypt, such a queer place ;-) we used the photo of the ATM keypad to decode the prices in the shops, the boat staff had fun with the towels too:

Azza and Bazza, we miss you guys (BBQ mauerpark, chicken at Henne and Christmas (super)market and in a "The Little Boat That Broke"):

Not staged:

France: small beer, small coffee, small minds?

Paul and Deb: we took him to a rockabilli concert, can you guess what he's looking at? Got bass luv?

Bed fail in a Bad town (travelling with Polina's folks in August)

Anya likes Berlin:

"Mensch ärger dich nicht" (translation Don't have a cow dude) a game in which you are destined to make A. no friends and B. have a cow. (L-R Axel (brother), Olaf (cousin), Emmi (mother), Polina (wife)):