MGS RADAR

Stephan gives a couple of good reasons for the limited posts over the last couple of months. Many of these points are also true for me. As you can see below it was not only this website that has been neglected for a while.

In fact the 1080 days of studies are a major reason for my recent quiteness. There would be certainly much to write about happenings in such an exciting city as Munich, but an evil Bachelor Thesis kept me hostage for months. Now, with my first post as Bachelor of Business Administration, I can finally cheer: Freedom has been regained! Communication strategies have been sufficiently assessed, the Thesis hastely written, but successfully defended.

This will be celebrated by wearing a toga and throwing hats high up into the air this Thursday in Venlo. The Dutch guys surprised once again with some tech savyness: The graduation ceremony will be broadcasted live online from 3:00pm on the 8th July.Watch it here and let me know if you could spot which pixels were supposed to be me.

And if I won’t spent too much time in the “Biergarten”, then I might write every know and then again

Daniel

It is not that I’m not in the mood to write a blog, it is the fact that the priority is just very low during these times…because I have got many things to do, here is an overview of the things

• I’m in the organisation team of a firefighting competition with ten groups
• I’m right in the middle of application stress…applications over applications because I want to work on intensive care!
• I’m much more involved in the training division and I need to prepare lots of things
• My car needed new brakes which I both replaced myself but even though it was 120 bucks worth!
• The school was taking up much of my time for many stuff
• Next week I’m on a seminar for pumping operator
• In three weeks five nursing students are overtaking half the ward for three weeks, and I’m the boss

So a lot of things are going on, sorry for the lazy updates I will try to post regulary

Stephan

["If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear!"]

What an icy, and for me personally busy start into the new year! I hope y’all made it through well into the new year, despite the blizzard-like conditions on the continent.

Thanks to a couple of internship application talks and the current exam period I am flying below the radar. Just to remain visible every now and then I want to share this beautiful prose I just discovered on last year’s Controlling exam:

“Calculate divisional earnings after corporate overhead allocations using divisional earnings before corporate overhead allocations as the allocation base.”

Controllers don’t write speeches, they calculate!

The showdown tomorrow morning for this year’s exam IS ON!

Daniel

Carnival is not fun, it is not the best time or the fourth season of the year. It’s a big fuck for me everytime it’s coming close and passing by…There is a multicasual approach to my hate and disgust collected over the time.

I was however a member of the fun club…years ago! I was one of the dickheads squirming around a spot, partly desorientated by cheap but tough booze. Yeah try to imagine the stories of your youth by taking part of carnival, beeing drunk one, maybe two times…okay maybe three times in this short 5 day time window. Guess what, in my best times with Padde and Mamerio around, we started drinking at school at 10am during the geography class, took part of the internal event (Which SUCKED, motherfuckers from THIS SCHOOL IT SUCKED because the fucking cunts from there started to make an educational sense of this shit…) and the rest was pure foolish will to PARTY HARD.
One time I was part of the STUDENT COUNCIL (one, maybe two cool people around this council, the rest was a bunch of stupid underfucked backstabbing cunts) I took part of the organization, fucked it all up by not playing the game because I don’t want this shit on my C.V….true thing is I sabotaged the event by letting “phrase-sheets” dissapear and let the bloke from the music technique play the wrong music (Nothing too obvious) , as the fun was over I dissapeared in the shadows)

But to get back here, you think you got a hard time carnival by getting drunk 3 times in 5 days? Don’t waste my time with this shit…again with Padde and Mamerio we started at Thursday 10am Nato Time and boozed our way till 3pm. Then we met again, partly drunk to join a stupid tent-party where I puked in two glasses and scared two pals down the hall by running after them with parts of a bench. I slept at Mamerios place I think and we tried to sanitize our morning-pain with nothing as plain as beer, to start hustlin’ over a private party at Friday 8pm. Again, we wasted ourselves, but started again at 10am on Saturday. We just put some fuel on the yesterday’s flames and we were right on the game. I remember drinking a mixture of whatsoever drinks from a fuel-canister…off to a private party at the same Saturday still wasted and got trewn out because I cracked an egg over the face of some asshole trying to impress me with his non-existend gangsta skills. On Sunday, the high - fest of the week in Brempt was present, we ran out of cash but organized ourselves some shit and got wasted, rather thrown out of the tent again. On monday we were broke, but nothing stopped us from walking 6km to Dülken fueled by pure fun,evil sin  and cheap whine. Again a day without much money left and cheap booze is nothing to be fond of.

We were young and we were REALLY stupid, but we tried to push ourselves out to the maximum. We hassled some guys and girls but only the ones that deserved true punishment for theirselves.

If you compare this to the generation of young drinkers today, they are all a bunch of whining suckers, trying to outbreak their parental over-control by DRINKING alcohol…just to set a statement or whatever.

We took responsibility for our own shit. We organized the alcohol, we organized a ride but mostly we were just fucking BROKE so we had to walk to the events of the day and we dealt with the shit in our own way. Every cent I spent during that days was my own money, in case something wrent wrong we just started to pull ourselves out of the shit. Parents offered us a ride, many times we just adjourned the offer (though sometimes we were too wasted to reject, hands down…still got enough credibility!) It was a small game, but we played a small game…I admit that.

Todays youn-guns are over-archievers. They just see drinking and alcohol as a part of their “educational” process. “Trying out things!” or “Just try to set the line” Something to write into your C.V. and something you need to discuss with your mother (maybe together with his son/daughter in HER/HIS favourite club-location dressed like a whore) so it doesn’t affect your overall process…and with that they just pull more idiots down, making something highly criminal out of youth…..Come on guys!

Todays drinking kids just drink to reach a balcony…a balcony from which they can see things too far away from their parental control psychosis. And the only chance to take a look on that is an outbreak, booze yourself to near-coma or make the smal Hulk out of you….”What are you looking at?” “You looked at my girlfriend?” Just raise impulses to proove you still got testosteron in your testicles. Because your psycho-parents try to numb you from anything. How ridiculous is THIS?

We drank because we liked it. We drank because we were young and we still know how to let the cages rattle. We were honourable enough to hide our self-destruction from our parents, because we know how to cover up our issues without bothering or hurting other people around them. And nothing, I repeat…NOTHING of the hundred of stupid acts including jumping from a fairly high tree down to a carport nearly destroying the whole thing (as you may notice…drunk as shit) or destroying numerous gardens of people because we wanted to take a short cut (An early form of PARCOURS…but not as “balletic” and “graceful” ….just pure violence) is something to be really proud of. Maybe you can impress some blokes who didn’t had a life but this is it. No matter how drunk you were, no matter how many times you puked…nothing to be proud off or nothing intelectual with educational factors. Just stupid shit drinking!

Also as a nurse, I see many victims of carnival…many young-motherfuckers who try to fuck the nurses and doctors over with violence, bragging, puking, spitting, biting and whining around. We are the sweepers of the fucked up…they lost the game, Alcohol again won. But not many of the young-guns can actually accept that they LOST the game…the game is over and this is the sweeper zone of the lost. While many of their buddies have good time, they lie around on the floors , bedded in their own excrements, their parents are coming over…the game is over. But they don’t accept the lost, they try to make their point, at the wrong place and wrong time and (now comes the worst part) take up ressources like ambulances, paramedics, nurses, doctors and even housekeeping staff. Many people need these RARE ressources (today, they are RARE!) but they are taking it because they want to win in the overtime.

I mean, these problems are not new…but the number and the “way” of the problems are new. The increasing number of violent young MOTHERFUCKERS with actually no medical problems at all is a problem, at least for me. Try to fuck me over during a nightshift on carnival…just try it out!
Everybody has a right to be stupid…everybody has a right to be sweeped…everybody has the right to be dragged up by the paramedics and sobered by the nurses. But let us stay to the actual medical problem, not the numbed-violence-parental-control-scheme or anything else twisted fuckover you bother the hospitals with.

Carnival just lost its bright and coloured fun, it’s not the same anymore !

Stephan

["If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear!"]

Pretty soon I’ll be on my night drive to the airport - marking the start of the holidays for my parents. No palms and beaches for me, but at least this week-end is a welcomed opportunity to switch the brain off and relax after a taugh week. I decided to reactive my old Armed Assault DVD, the Operation Flashpoint successor which I never finished and haven’t been playing for about a year already. And you know what? I think only THESE games can be as equally entertaining as they can be frustrating. Playing on the hardest (veteran) level I was in three hours not able to finish this damn mission. Still at the same point where I stopped a year ago. I might try the medium level (which allows you to save actually more than once during a mission) next time…

Oh and YEEEEAAAAH… we actually have an election coming up NOW.

Dr. Udo Brömme has my first vote for sure! My Germän schpeaking friends, have a look at these Harald Schmidt clips. I found last Thursday’s show both politically enlighting as well as prickling (in a fizzy candy way).

Daniel

I nearly got one year left until I can consider myself REGISTERED NURSE. If I look back at my last year at OUR school and the atmosphere that was around I see parallels and things in common.

Last week I looked at some of my mp3 files and videos I collected of my musical influences. I did the same with my favourite pc games and despite I know how old Iam I saw the years flewing by. I can remember my first day in 11th grade like it was yesterday, and sometimes I miss those days of leisure and fun.

Also I can remember the first course in my nursing class and my first ward, everything was new and everything was a challenge, some things are a challenge even today. Some people see my sidestep in nursing as a waste of time. I don’t think so, how much I hate that I cannot give patients the care they need, I absolutely love beeing a nurse.

My questionable future comes more closer next year. My training is over, next year I’m a professional and next year I have to make all the choices involved. But next year I have to make some decent career choices and that involves a lot of planning and even luck, what comes next, where will I be? Things were much more “safe” three years ago were I was in a comparable situation.

The challenges came to me automaticly, I had nothing I could rest on, no further job training and no further qualification. I needed something. Now I can see things much more relaxed, I have a job in which I can make money, I have a safe place where I currently reside.

The next challenge is not the challenge itself. I have to put myself in the line to attend this challenge, I could rest on my R.N. and say “What the fuck, relax you have a job and a training” but it would not be me, it would be somebody else but not me!

Years ago, everything was fascinating and new to me and my friends. We tried things out and made memories together…we went through a lot of shit and a lot of fun. Nothing too glamourous but we lived our lives.

Now these lives are a lot more…linear. We all have to put us under some kind of authority and we all have to put our lives in some kind of order. Something we never thought about 10 years ago…we all had our dreams and our plans but they were so far away.

I see the last years of my parents in the active job lives. My mother is retired and my step-father is in his final years. He is not in the position to change the world. They are not overall happy with the paths they have chosen, they are struggling with job related health issues and their live is a blurry, continouus substance. Something that I never want to do in my life…but talking is good, acting is different.

Let’s face the daily challenge again^^

Stephan

["If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear!"]

…because you will die!(A recent study showed that the surviving rate for the victim of a heavy traffic accident with possibly life-threatening injuries in industrial settings is at the lowest point around 8.00AM) A friend of mine, which used to install electric arrangements at my girlfriends flat told me about an accident he had several months ago. He struck over a moped driver and he did a summersault right into the greener side of the road. His experience was, besides from beeing the idiot, of the hour that nobody really pulled over except

1) One off duty police officer coming home from his shift
2) One off duty firefighter
3) A boy, something about 14-16 years of age

This experience is something, which in my years of nursing and medicals practice and also  years of volonteer fire service, natural to me. I really don’t expect easy first aid from bystanders or members of public. During my first years it was kind of frustrating but now I have given up my rage.

In this times, people don’t give a shit about other people…or the people are over-caring the whole system. The span of our society between good and bad people is getting bigger, there are less gray zones.

The only time where people give a shit is, when they experience the same or at least the likewise amount of disaster. If people experiencing a bad situation together, you can really see that the solidarity between completely unknown people rises. I have seen this around some heavy summer storms where basements where filled with water (and a whole street r block was drowned) or during bad exceptional storms like Kyrill….but this is different.
I speak to a damn female university student, which has the main subject catholic theology and chemistry for teaching. She tells me about her stress (I didn’t know her until this conversation) and that she doesn’t know how to put all the things she must obviously do into her 24hours day and 7 days week. Then she kindly asks me what I’m doing, and I tell her that I’m a nurse.

I don’t really give a shit about random people. But I’m not a bastard at all. If I read a newspaper about some corpse from a traffic or railroad accident, I don’t feel a single second of dismay, because why should I worry about it? I have enough things to worry, sad story and I really don’t want to think about the relatives but after 5 seconds even this little to no dismay is gone. I have to give a shit in my job, it is my profession and I’m payed to care about people and their requirements. And not only physical requirements, I mean anything. I give a lot of shit to the people I have in my care even if I don’t like them but I get payed to set back my personal displeasing and I’m trained to do so. PERIOD.

In my second job as a firefighter I do not get payed to care about, but I chose to care about the citizen in danger and his belongings. If I’m not into the whole caring module of firefighting I probably need to look for other options to endure my free time.

In my private life I also care about many people who are very important to me, but this is usual as everybody does that.

But if some lucky loser is laying on the street with a stroke or a bad wound on his head, it is not a feasible argument that I don’t care about random people why should I care about this victim of coincidence? Everybody will need help someday even from complete strangers, it is something that you will get back some day in some time, without any payment and without anything than a thank you and a handshake from the paramedics. But this should really be adequate.
Most people have either a highly god-like image of a nurse or they have the image of some pricks sitting in an office doing nothing but drinking coffee and flirting with doctors. She REALLY told me: “Well you got an easy life as a nurse!”

“Why ? And then she says “I have to get up at 06:00 and then I have to take the first bus at 6:45 to catch the train at 7:15 so I can be at my first lecture around 7:50!” Inside myself I deeply think and amuse myself. Then I tell her, that the time you went up my work starts and the time you place your ass right in the university chair I have done washing 4 to 8 patients or I’m busy preparing patients for things.

“But you don’t have such a big responsibility than I will have as a teacher!”

I really like these comparisons between completely different jobs.
Some minutes later, we bypassed the usual first conversational bullshit some party guest had drunk way to much and sat opposite of us, doing not so well…he knew my conversational partner and told her “Ah I’m not feeling good!”

She shakes my shoulder like a moron….”Well you gotta do something, you are a nurse!”

And I said, no you are the one claiming you’ll have the bigger responsibility…so let’s rock!”

She felt challenged and went over to him, did some fancy shaking of his head and tried to move him over to more fresh air (Despite the fact that we acutally WERE outside in the garden, but let’s just cut this out!) which was not a good idea because the guy fell down in the grass.

She felt helpless and tried to move him up, which didn’t work but looked quite funny…then all of a sudden she outburts

“You’re a bastard, you can be legally charged with non-assistance of a person in danger!”

I paused a little bit and told her”Well, this “PATIENT” here is not in any real danger , he just drank too much let’s just help him to arrange himself to get home and place him in a bed!”

I showed him the way out and his bike, and then he grabbed the handlebar and went home in a, almost too strict, line. <--Patient happy, Helper satisfied
After this a discussion about first aid blew out the last remaining persons. I will not summon the usual, I just want to state what is my impression of me as a medical-trained first-responder.

In case anything happens, nobody is responsible for first aid because it is not her problem, BUT if there is a medical trained person in the room he is the only one responsible for help.

This is the particular reason why I carry around more than a bandage-packet in my car, this is the reason why I have a bigger first aid kit. In case anything happens, I'm alone and I can have the highest responsbile persons, bosses, CEO's, master chiefs and maybe leading humans around me...in case you need first aid, the lower-class nurse has the highest responsibility and the barking bastards convert into shoulder-twitching bystanders with lots of index fingers.

Any person who is able to put a nail in a wall is able to place a warning-triangle. Any person who is able to wash his car is able to put a person in recovery position. It's always the same, it requires training and it's so easy to do. But there won't be much more people surviving on the street IF first aid training is mandatory in a fixed time corridor. It just stretches the willingness and the responsibility of people. It just puts the responsibility to get yourself trained in several things over to a bigger and even higher allmighty mass. It won't change the fact that people are driven by greed, anxiety and the struggle to care for themselves and doesn't give a shit. They are a few exceptions, but these people don't need much training in first aid because they do more than the usual.

I offer anybody in my far-friend-circle first aid training but I don't ask for it...they have to ask me. Any step towards the question if they are interested can be far over-interpreted as smartassing or self-presentation. Not my board of game.

Some people tell me "Wow....if you are on a scene everybody survives"..but this won't be the fact. The chance that these people will get better is higher, but I can't do magic tricks on the street, and even less, If I'm without my equipment. Easy-standard-first-aid isn't worse than my kind of first aid. You don't have much items in your toolbox, my toolbox is filled with lots of things and this isn't easy to always pick the right tool. People with no backround-knowledge don't think far and don't think so much..they just do and follow the algorhythm. Which is enough for people who are not trained in medicine.

There must be a gray zone, a zone between the one particular person who doesn't care at all OR thinks that he is the master of the situation and tells everybody not to move the patient and leave him alone.  There must be a gray zone between people who don't know shit and the ejaculated ladies who are so proud that they managed to do a recovery position the first time of their life in their first aid course.

 

Be a part of that gray zone

My rage is away, learn first aid!

Stephan

["If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear!"]

I usually (with some exception) don’t write about the things going on in my fire department, but this time it is about myself and a little bit about the daily struggle.

I’m in my department for nearly 5 years (11 years if you count the junior firefighters brigade). I was promoted this year and got my SCBA permission, I got all my trainings and recieved most of the trainings one can archieve in my actual position. I’m the vice leader of the junior firefighters brigade and was the leader for over one year. My next goal is to get the squad leader permission next year and in some time I want to get group-leader. I spent at most 2 evenings at our station, sometimes just for nice talkings with my comrades, sometimes for hard work. I’m now responsible for the emergency medical equipment , which isn’t quite a deal but I have to train my comrades for it.

Last week was the first time where I put my “life in danger”, I went into a burning, over-smoked barn under respiratory protective equipment and sweated like a fucking hog. Normal people wouldn’t spent 20 minutes in a barn full of smoke and room temperature way over 40 degress celsius, but I’m not normal at all - I’m a fucking firefighter.

I don’t like the hero aspect of my work. Many people think that firefighters are heroes, and in fact many firefighters ARE heros but I’m not. I saved some people from disasters, I rescued a few guys from trucks or cars and took care of them. You can say I saved their lives, but that doesn’t make me necessarily a hero. A hero is somebody who goes into a unpredictable and dangerous situation and doesn’t give a shit about his life and maybe the other guys who have to rescue your ass. A hero is somebody who plays russian roulette with his luck and some coincidence.

We are fucking crazy mates in the fire department. Everybody is nuts, sometimes we shit about some procedures and sometimes we push our luck far beyond the protocol. On our last job we normally had to wait until we have a rescue squad manned in our truck, but we just had one squad with none of us as a squad-leader, the machinist and the group-leader. We took a deep shit at the protocol, because we saw smoke in the air and everybody silently agreed to the verbal contract about “Let’s just do this !”

This isn’t heroic, it is stupid but we know any aspect of this. We now that our stupidity will be compensated in some manner which we can’t define exactly, but let’s celebrate it worked!

As I came home and told my girlfriend about it she wasn’t happy, she wasn’t happy about the fact that I went into a burning barn. It was heavy, but it was in some way very cool and a fucking great thing to do, but she did not share my enthusiasm. A day later I checked the weather frequently because some storm came over Mönchengladbach. She declared me fucking crazy. “Stop checking the weather!”

Today I had to pump some basements because of a second storm and I was out from 16:00 to 21:00. I exchanged my chilly afternoon with an afternoon in wet boots and pants down in hot and sweaty basements with lots of dirty water and sitting around hours staring at wet floors and pumped water. I hate it, but I was a part of it.

For over 5 years from now on, I went up in the middle of the night to put out fires at paper-containers. I spent nights loading out collided trucks to turn them over. I stood on the street in pouring rain and waved away cars. On my rare free weekends I went up at 8:00 to go to the firefighters school and get my trainings. After my work where I was tired like fuck, I went to the evening firefighter classes until 11pm. I skipped parties and exchanged it to sweating my ass of in big fires or traffic accidents. Then I did something for fire-department festivals and spent hours in decorating or renovating the halls or cleaning the cars. Besides this I train the junior firefighters and do classes for them until I have no voice.

I cannot do this second work very good without interfering my private life. Everybody in the department knows this, and also the people affected knew this. But their understandment sometimes just lasts three times and after the fourth time it is over. And there is no solution to this point. Nothing but cancelling the whole thing.

This just for beeing a part of it. But this point (beeing a part of it) is the thing that holds our department and firefighters together.

Stephan

["If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear!"]

Sounds like an ill fit to say God bless to a godless ideology?

It works for me – of course from a strictly happy camper / sociologist point of view. The fact that the topic “Marxism and the role of family” has been the most popular essay topic among students on the final Sociology exam, in which I also participated as a guest student, bears some irony. Here I am attending a private business school - in some ways the epitome of capitalist cadre building – in post-socialist Poland, and discuss Marxist Conflict Theory and how traditional family structures reproduce society’s inequalities.

But it was fun to live out the Commi-side and today it was an even nicer surprise to get the grade report. Forgive me the self-cheering, but to quote my co-writer Stephan: It was BAM! Leading the class with a 6. I didn’t even know they actually still assign sixes on university. That’s how they grade in Poland in case you wonder.

Everyone needs to cheer for him- or herself every once in a while. The GoodCheerCompany knows that!

Daniel

With somebody around my side who has another, more objective point of view and actually percieve what goes around in my everyday family life I  see much more of the usual differences with people living together. It’s much more than that and during the last 17 minutes of pure ignorance I’m filled up with that.

The trigger point was just nothing but staying on principle…Today I moved my drumset out of our reharshall space and within the same time I asked my mother if it is okay if I set it up in the basement and use it to play during acceptable times.

There was enough unused space, I interfere with nobody and I tested the noise level. It is acceptable and with a few modifications of the room I will be able to reduce it to barely noticeable.These modifications will go on my own bill and I will make them by myself (From now on I have enough time to do this)

At 0:00 o’clock I went down to get something to drink and there was my mothers boyfriend or whatever in his usual military style…”Tomorrow evening at 20pm the drumset will be set off, or I will set it off with my method!”

And I just said that this was part of a conversation my mother held with me this day and she said it is okay if HE is not a home. I accepted that…I’m far enough at this point that I accept several “quirks” of somebody I use to live with.

But this time, no…this time I’m not the one backing off. I’m not the one setting back things which are part of my life. I’m not the one letting myself treat in a way nobody deserves to be treated. But I see it coming that I have no choice of doing it over and over again. And the biggest shame of this is the fact that I have options left which I don’t use…I can move out. It will not be easy, it will not be very good but everybody needs some time at the lo-line of society.

Last weekend was my and his (bf of my mother’s) birthday celebration with the last remaining part of our family. My brother and his wife for coffee and cake. It was so fucking boring, my mind was sleeping while my body was awake. Even at my birthday celebration, I play the assistant role of my family. The young , blood-headed, over-talented prick who never will be sucessfull because of his attitude towards everything blabla shit. I could be the fucking manager of General Motors, and I still will have this role written for myself.

I don’t know why, but allmost any member of my family thinks that I’m a complete hack at my nursing program. I’m not perfect, I’m not the uber-nurse and sometimes I even think that I’m not a good nurse at all. It is pretty sure that I’ll at least try to apply for medical school next year so I can begin my 7 year journey at 2011. It is pretty sure for me that I want to sit behind an anaestesia machine, that I want to write orders in a blue scrub on an intensive care ward. I imagine myself with less hair and more beard standing around a cardiac arrest of a patient intubating him and yelling commands like “360 biphasic shock, pull up 3 ampulls of epinephrine, get an IV!” and I even see myself introducing to experienced and old nurses with the short by-phrase: “Well I worked as a registered nurse for some time…!” So the nursing study is no time-filler for me, it is the first phase in my entry into the medical world. So much everybody thinks that I’ll be a good doctor, I’ll always be a nurse in my heart because beeing a nurse taught me how things happen in every part of patients life. I explained this to my family…they mocked about it. They have no respect for my work, they have no clue what I’m actually doing in my 7 hours of hell. No respect for me no respect for them , simple as that.

When I take a look at the life of people who raised me up I feel disgust. I cannot imagine a life like this…total meaningless, brainwashing- hiding behind a curtain of false security. Your life, determined by fear…fear about opening the abandoned files that remain semi-deep, surfacing everytime the order of stupidity and ignorance is broken or questioned.

Sometimes life just sucks, no matter who your are,no matter what you are and no matter what you do
- [ Mick Thompson - Lead guitarist and songwriter of Slipknot]

Stephan

["If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear!"]