First think, then do

You might have heard this week that 'Two and a half men' star Angus T. Jones said some, well, not nice stuff about the show he's on. He said he doesn't want to be there anymore, called it 'filth' and added that he also doesn't want his fans to watch the show anymore. I was very shocked when I heard that because I never thought he would say something like that. The guy who plays Jake Harper always seemed nice and smart to me. I mean I never thought he is like the character he's playing, but well, this was anything else than smart. Who would ever dare to speak so bad about his job? Okay we do complain, not everything is good all the time, but we don't do that on the internet, where everyone can listen.

It's not because we are not that popular like he is, I guess our bosses would find the video if we would make one, put it on youtube and complaing how bad our job and the company is. Probably they would like to talk to us, convince us to apologize and that is what Angus did. But did he really mean it? I mean, what happened that he said such bad stuff? What is true? What does he really think about the show who made him that successful and rich (he earns 350.000 $ per episode)? I mean where would he be without the show? He grew up with it, spent almost 10 years with these guys.

As you all know he was not the first one who caused the show trouble. Charlie Sheen made some videos in which he talked not that nice about the show, too. And now Angus. I keep asking myself how long the show still can exist and if the next will be Jon Cryer complaining about something. When the people who work on there don't believe in the show, and when there is not only one but two persons now, I honestly don't know how long the show still can go on. They have to give 100 %, they have to love and enjoy what they do and appreciate that maybe without the show they wouldn't be that successful.

no one wants to hear a complaint - but what can be done that no one dares to complain? (pic taken from bedandbreakfastworld)

I would never talk bad about my job, at least not on the internet. I've heard of many guys who lost their jobs because their bosses found them on Facebook and read what they wrote about the company. They made a screenshot and had a proof, the employee had no chance to deny it. So you don't have to be a celebrity and think no one will ever find you on the internet because it is that huge and you are just a single person. Everyone can be easily found, and on Facebook is much easier.

Do you watch 'Two and a half men' and what do you think does Angus really think about the show? Has someone convinced him to complain, or has someone convinced him to apologize? And do you think the show will last that much longer or could this 10th season already be the last one? Have you ever said anything bad about your job on the internet, and had it any consequences, or have you thought about it?

Live every single moment

I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving. I hope you can enjoy that day with your family and friends. It wasn't that long ago that I wrote about so many things in our lives we take for granted and don't really appreciate that we are lucky to have them. The most precious things in life can't be paid with any money. I would be nothing without my family and friends, who always support me, who are always there for me. I am really deeply grateful for having them in my life.

Another thing we often don't really appreciate is time. That we have this time to spend, that we have the chance to live - these things are unique, these things are special. We often complain about the things we don't have, instead of being thankful for what we have. So many things we only recognize when we lost them. In my mind, that's very sad. Life offers so much to be grateful for. That we have this life, that we can live, that we are healthy, that we have a family and friends who take care of us, that we have a home which is not about the building but, like the heart, about the people who are in there, that we can breathe, that we can smell, hear and listen, taste and the only sense we can't live without: touch.

We can feel, people can touch us, not only by actually touching us. Some touch our heart, make us cry, make us laugh. I thank every person who stepped into my life: at school, at work, at college, on blogger or twitter. It's great to get in touch with all of you. I wouldn't be the person who I am right now, if anything would have happened differently. Sometimes we meet people, and one day we figure out their real truth. That can hurt, that can upset, but in the end we realize that this made us stronger. Also the bad times we have to go through are part of our personality, part of the person we are right now.

I do think that not only people we meet in person can change and inspire us. Also people from TV, singers, actors, writers, maybe also politicians, or any other person we once heard about can do that. When they do or say something that maybe reminds us of our own, or when they just do something really kind, generous or something you wish to do but never dared. What ever it is, all of these guys can change us and are part of our life. We take our time to spend being interested in them, in their work. Spending time with someone is the greatest gift we can give. Time never comes back, and so every little moment. Maybe you think that a little moment means nothing compared to your entire life, but aren't all these little moments our life?

picture taken from hhdwallpapes

So thank you for taking your time to read this. Thanks for visiting my blog. Have a very happy Thanksgiving!!

What are you thankful for? How do you spend your Thanksgiving?

OperationSAFE

This blog post is a part of the I follow my heart project 

 “The spirit of a man will sustain him in sickness, but who can bear a broken spirit?” 

Proverb

Kids should be kids. They should play with their friends, have fun and living a good life with their family. A family that protects them, takes care of them and gives them love. But unfortunately not every kid is blessed with that. So many children lost their parents way too early and so they need others to help them. Like OperationSAFE, that is run by volunteers and short-term teams.

picture taken from the OperationSAFE-website

So many bad things happen every single day. You receive a bad message from your doctor, someone of your family suffers or someone you loved had died. It is hard for us to go through this, to understand why such a bad thing had happened to us. But imagine you would still be a child. Wouldn’t it be so much worse? Children understand such a disaster even less than an adult. Why did this happen to them? Why had their parents left them? Left them all alone? They keep asking themselves such questions and they will never forget what happened to them.

Maybe they also think they have done something wrong, and that’s the punishment. But of course that is not true. When an earthquake or another natural disaster caused the death of their parents and they have to live in an orphanage, they might not feel loved. These kids are loved but not by the ones they love: their own parents. They miss them, miss the safety they gave them. So when a kid gets affected by such a horrible disaster, they suffer much more than a grown-up, and so they need special help. OperationSAFE takes care of these children. They teach them the five important principles to emotional recovery and survival.

After such a disaster had happened and the kids know that they won’t see their parents again, they feel left alone. So the first thing for them is to realize that they are not. There are still people who love them and take care of them, because everyone is important. Life is a gift, and everyone is worth living his or her life. So they should make new friends and talk to them, it’s not about to give up but to look forward. Believe in yourself and follow your heart. Stay courageous and strong. You’ll realize that you are loved.

Stories, crafts, songs and games help these kids to regain hope. They make friends, communicate with each other, and try to forget. They won’t forget, but together they can get through it all a bit better and easier. OperationSAFE does a great job in my mind, that’s why I wanted to write about their work. I think it’s really impressive and a great thing. Children should be allowed to have a good childhood, they should not suffer, they should not have to go through such pain and think life is only about that. They should firstly see the beautiful sides of life. So when something so horrible happened to them, they need help of others to realize that they are not alone, that they are loved and life goes on. Everyone working for OperationSAFE shows us, that life really has very good, kind and generous sides, too.

For more on OperationSAFE go to http://opsafeintl.com/

Home

This is a new poem I wrote lately. Would love to read your comments about it. What does home mean to you?


Long time I was walking,
walking on a bumpy road.
Seeking for that place,
the place everyone’s talking about.
The place where I feel safe.
Where I feel at home.

I went by bus, by plane,
to saw places all over the world.
I travelled a lot,
because no one told me where that place is.
But where do people go to,
when they say they go home?

What is home?
And where is home?
Some say it’s where you grew up.
Some say it’s where your family lives.
Some say it’s just where you feel happy.

I want to feel happy,
and so I started walking.
Because I want to be happy,
I want to have a family, my family.
Some say that I’ll know it when I am home.
One day my searching was over.
When I met this guy,
and he showed it to me.
Home is not a place where you can go to,
it’s not under water, not in the sky,
it’s not a building.

You can go wherever you want,
and your home will be with you.
When you once found it,
and you are accepted,
that’s when you are at home.

Because home is where you feel happy,
where you feel safe.
And where can it be better
than in the heart of the one you love?

Veneration of the deceased

Have you ever thought about burning your money? Your iPad or even your car? Well, in China people do that. They buy all these stuff to burm them. You don't believe that? You think they are crazy because who would buy something to burn it afterwards? And who would even burn money?

iPad and iPod mode of paper, picture taken from http://www.eogn.com/

Well, all that stuff is made of paper. The Chinese buy things for their beloved ones who recently passed away. They buy what they think the deceased would need in their afterlife. So they go to special stores and buy there cars, chairs, any kind of devices, whatever they like, but all made of paper, and burn it all at the funeral. The Chinese believe that otherwise the ghosts of the deceased would come to them in their dreams and ask for stuff to enjoy their afterlife.

I think though it's a bit sad to burn this awesome and really well-made things, which look totally real. I also think that it's a nice touch and a good thing. I mean, the Chinese think that life still continues in some way and want to help their beloved ones who left this world to enjoy their afterlife. But in my mind it's more for the bereaved people. I guess this helps them to believe that the deceased are still happy and have everything they need.

What do you think about that way to honor the deceased?

Night of lights

The nights get darker and colder. Soon Christmas will come again. Can you imagine that? Already Christmas? Don’t get me wrong, it’s my fave time of the year. Not only because of the presents that I get, okay they are not bad, but I mostly enjoy the time with my family. This year my cousin from Crete will come again with her son and hubby. I don’t see them very often, so I am even more happy to see them. Christmas shows me that everyone of my family is healthy and we are all together, and what can be more important?

As a kid I loved the presents the most, but the older I became, the more I realized that there are things much more important that what someone bought me. The most precious things in life can’t be bought and can’t be replaced, can’t be fixed. Life is unique. And so is your health. And time. So when you sit together with your family, the ones you love, you can forget all your stress you had at work and everything bad that happened in the last year. You simply have time, time to spend with those who you appreciate the most. That moment is unique, that moment can’t be replaced.

The time before Christmas is also very important. Like St. Martin’s day. I don’t know if you know that story about a monk named Martin who cut his cloak in half to share it with a beggar to protect him from dying because of a snow storm and the incredibly coldness. In that night Martin dreamed about Jesus, who appeared to him as the beggar wearing the other half of his cloak and said to the angels:  "Here is Martin, the Roman soldier who is not baptised; he has clothed me."

In Germany the kids celebrate that night of the 11th November every year. They walk through that cold night in groups, carrying their self-created paper lanterns, which they made at home or in school, to light up the night. In the lanterns are mostly real candles, not only to bring light but also warmth to the people who need it.

I remember walking with my lantern back when I was a kid. Though it was cold, I loved it. It is something really good and shows how important it is to share something that can’t be bought. It means so much more and it brings the spirit of Christmas. Giving. To see the ones who really need help, and help them, at least by thinking of them. I mean everyone of us could be such a person who needs help, right? By seeing and realizing that, you appreciate even more the time you are able to spend with your family, healthy and together. And it doesn’t have to be Christmas to do that.

Kids walking with their lanterns (pic taken from wikipedia)

Living in a hologram?

In the Halloween episode of the Big Bang Theory, Leonard showed Penny the hologram of a pencil and told her that the string theory ‘thinks’ that we all live in a hologram, or at least, this can be possible. It reminded me a bit of what I wrote about the 5th season and what it meant to me. ‘This is not what it looks like’ (you find and can read the story when you click on the tab 'My work'). That was the main sentence of the 5th season of the show, and I still love to think about that. I mean, who says what anything looks like?

For those who have read ‘What are you really looking for?’, you might remember that the girl who just appeared, changed the way the guys saw the set, but nothing had really changed. It was some sort of hologram that I thought of, so when I saw that scene I was thinking about exactly that. When you have read a physics book, then you know that what we see isn’t actually there like that. It’s like the computer, which needs only 0 and 1, but what we see and what it is able to show us, is much more than the two numbers.

Same it is in real life. There are only atoms, no form, no colors, nothing. This is all our imagination. You say I’m kidding? No, read a physics book, it’s in there. The way atoms react with each other gives everything its forms and they way the sun reflects on them causes the colors we see. That was a very easy explanation, the truth is a bit more complicated. But when I first read about that, I was really impressed.
I mean that our eyes see things, and our brain turns it upside down to create a senseful picture, that’s what probably all of us know from Biology. But our eyes see no pictures, it’s like the 0 and 1 in the computer. Our brain creates the picture out of the data given by the eyes. So what something looks like is depending on what our brain let us see. With that knowledge I had the idea that when someone would figure out the ‘atom-code’, so the actual atom composition of each body, they could figure out which atoms are needed to change the way the brain creates its picture and you see something totally different instead of what is really there.

Maybe we do live in a hologram, maybe what we see isn’t the reality. It’s just our imagination, but not like in a dream life that we can simply change the way we see it. So often we only see what we wanna see, that’s no question. But maybe the one who once 'programmed' us, wanted us to see it like we see it. I mean if we would live in a world in which we were only able to see atoms, wouldn't this be very weird? Maybe there’s so much unexplored, so much that we yet not know, that we’re not aware of.

Pilot of Artists of Life

Here it is: the pilot of my first self-created sitcom called Artists of Life. I really hope you guys will like it and have fun reading it.



Please write me what you think of the story, the characters, what you like and what not, e.g. which scene was funny or maybe one you didn't understand. I'm gonna write some more episodes and I wanna improve it, so, also when you find any mistake, please don't hesitate to write me. Thanks.


I once asked on Twitter how to name the two main characters. And so goes some special and big THANKS to Cliff who gave Brent his name and Briony who named Gary. I hope you like 'your' characters ;)

So here is the link to the PDF. You can read it online or download it for free on your computer or any other device. But please don't change and/or distribute it in any way. If you wanna publish it or parts of it, please write me first. Thanks.

Last but not least some background info: In the scene in which Gary and Brent sit at the kitchen table, talking about Gary's plan how to solve their problem paying the rent, Brent says:

'15³ people? If that's your sensation magnitude, I might should relate it to your stimulus intensity.'

He refers to the Stevens' power law which is about the relation of real change and the felt change. Imagine you hold a glass of water. When someone puts a few drops in, you don't feel that the glass is heavier but actually it is. So a drop makes the glass already heavier but until you feel that's heavier you need a few milliliters of water. So in that scene he isn't sure if Gary's plan will work, and wanna relate the huge success that Gary expects with what will actually happen.

It's really interesting, so if you wanna know more about the Stevens' power law click here or on the wikipedia site.