Our 5 Cents
Category: Life
10 Things?
This morning, while on my daily YouTube morning cruise (guilty pleasure of mine) I glanced over a video where a famous person was asked to name 10 things they can’t live without. I didn’t watched it, but it still got me thinking. How many things are there I could not live without? First thing, of course is my dog, she is the most important something in my life. She changed my life in such a profound and positive way that I literally never want to live without a dog. The next thing I can’t live without is coffee. It is the one thing I’m actually addicted too. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs, I don’t even eat sugar/products that contain sugar, but without coffee I can’t function at all plus I develop a real nasty headache. The third thing on my list would be my smart phone. No, not because of social media, I don’t do social media, but because of taking photos, communication, my music and all my audio books I have on there. There is also my knitting app and all my photos are in there too. My smart phone is kinda the logbook of my life. The fourth piece on my list is my desktop PC. It’s a big gaming machine but I do so much more than just gaming with it. I stream my TV with it, I paint, I shop and I blog with it (I hate to do that on my smart phone even when I could). Also I learn new stuff with it (I love tutorials to learn new things). Number 5 sure is yarn and needles. Knitting and crocheting is a big part of my life. Producing useful and/or cute things from nothing is so much fun, besides it’s so meditative and you always have toasty feed.
Well 5 is all I can come up with. Sure, there is a ton of things I really love like pasta, pizza, sugar free chocolate bars, a juicy steak, I’m dreaming of a Mac Book and that really nice big vintage fridge. There is a million of things I really enjoy or would like to have but life goes on even when I don’t have them. They are fun to have/would be fun to have but I do not depend on them like I do with those 5 pieces above. Actually I’m really surprised that I could only come up with 5. Can you make it to 10 items?
One Year
Can you believe that?! It’s been a whole year today since I started my new blogging journey. It’s true, time flies when you are having fun. When I started a year ago I didn’t even knew what kind of content I wanted. All the things I did in the past are not relevant anymore today. Ya, social media has changed the internet a lot. People are not interested in pixel art, sig tags and line art anymore. But despite the lack of content ideas I felt that urge to get a blog and I always follow my belly feeling even when it does not make sense.
Over time I slowly slipped into posting a photo every day. It just felt right. We do walkies every day, regardless of weather and such, we walk and there is always something to see. During the past year I learned so much about the local plants and I’ve learned that it can be fun and rewarding to leave the comfort zone now and then. Well, I’m looking forward to the coming year and I’m curious to where the road will lead.
The Lost Translation
I ran kinda ran outta photos, or rather motives worth capturing, for today, so I thought I tell you a story instead. You see, my native language is German. Yes, I had English in school, but I would not call that English in the sense of how native speakers would speak it. It was more like tourist English, like “hello, my name is James, where are the toilets please”. Useful like a hole in the head, right?! I started to learn real English from native speakers at the end of the nineties. Well it started at that time and it was a long fun journey, but ones you obtained that skill you will notice that there is something wrong with the entertainment industry….
Most of the stuff we watch on TV or our streaming services is made in one of the English speaking countries and therefor the original tone is English. The first time I noticed that something was wrong was when I was watching the movie Ice Age first time in it’s original tone AFTER I had watched it in German a few time. Woah! In English it was a whole different movie. Not only did I not have to endure that super annoying voice of Otto Waalkes who did the voice over for one of the heros, no, a lot of the dialogs where different and there where tons of jokes in the movie that I didn’t get with the German version. Someone messed up the translation big time.
From there I started to watch every show and movie I cared about in English whenever I got the chance. Often here in Germany they do not let you have the chance. They force you to watch the crappy German translation. Amazon often gives you a choice and I appreciate that a lot. The German streaming service doesn’t, but a lot of the modern series are translated in a way that you can still hear the original tone and then you get the really crappy German translation, what makes it worth. You hear every wrong translation and every time they just totally change what is said.
But the most hilarious totally wrong translation I ever stumbled over can be found in World of Warcraft, Warlords of Dreanor expansion. My daughter was playing on a German client and my client was English. There was this quest called “For the Bird”. The right translation would have been “Für die Vögel”. Very simple, right? You could think so, I mean even Google can translate that correct. But nope, in the German client it was named “Gut zu Vögeln”. If you translate that literally you would get “Friendly to Birds” buuuut and this this a huge BUT, “gut zu vögeln” is German slang for “good to have sex with”. What where they thinking? I doubt Blizzard ever found out.
Sneaking Out
No photo today! Instead I want to share something with you. For most of you this might be boring as doing taxes, but if there is just one person who takes something away from this, then my mission is accomplished. I would like to share why and how I stopped smoking. The reason what not the obvious suspect, no it was something most people don’t even think about.
Most people stop smoking due to health reasons. I didn’t. I smoked a lot and I enjoyed it. There was something else that made me thinking of quitting. It was the money. The prices for a pack of cigarettes is constantly rising. Every single year they pushed it up. When I was a kid one pack with about 30 cigarettes would cost 2 DM (Germany Mark, before the Euro). As of January this year one pack with 20 cigarettes goes for 7 Euros. Well, rising prices are nothing new and it happens to all things we buy all the time, but do you know that 80 % of those 7 Euros is pure tax money? Yup, all smokers toss an insane amount of money at the tax office every day on a voluntarily basis. I’m not good with math but you can figure, even without calculating, that this is a stupid amount of money.
When there is something I totally hate, then it’s paying more taxes then I actually have to. I mean, who doesn’t?! See, I smoked 2 packs a day, that’s 14 Euros, 80 % are 11.20 Euro taxed, per day. That’s 78 Euros per week, 314 per month and 3762 Euro per year just in taxes. Now tell me, that isn’t a good reason to stop smoking. You would safe a shit ton of taxed just from not doing something anymore. The only problem was how to get from smoking a lot to not smoking at all. I tried the “just stop it” method and failed. That didn’t work for me. But I learned from experience that if a task seems to hard, then do it little steps.
First thing I did was to look for an alternative and it happened that at that time vaping came out. So I switched from smoking to vaping (with nicotine) and that was a lot cheaper already because our government hadn’t spotted that yet as another opportunity to steal more tax money from us. That step brought more benefits than just dodging the tobacco tax. My sense of smell and taste came back, no more stinking ash trays, no tobacco crumbles and ashes all over the place, no more stink in my home and my cloth. That was already a huge wow effect. I didn’t expect that.
After a while I cut out the nicotine and surprise, my body didn’t even notice. I vaped a bit more just for fun till our government started to tax vaping too and that was the point where I stopped it. Was no problem at all. Yes now and then I still think “oh now a cigarette would be so nice” but the thought comes an goes in a second. It’s more like a memory to something I enjoyed in the past but there is no urge to smoke anymore.
What I did with all the saved money you ask? Well, I got my dog and I spoil her rotten. And there is more money for nice things like this blog for example. And every morning I wake up and think “hehehe no 14 Euros tax from me today, go and shoot yourself in the foot dear tax office” and that alone makes my day already.
Somewhat Patchy 