How to make non-smokers like you

I have always had strong feelings about smoking, as I’ve never even smoked a single cigarette in my life and never understood the compassion, with which so many people destroy their health. Still, I have a lot of friends who smoke and I used to be a douche about it. Yet there comes the time, where you start to realize that you can’t and shouldn’t change somebody just because there is something about him/her that you don’t like. So this is what I want to do: a list of a few guidelines for smokers to get along with non-smokers.

6. Don’t recruit

Smoking is a choice. It should stay that way. You wouldn’t believe how many people react to the fact that I have never smoked with the following statement: “You don’t know what you’re missing, try one!” If I wanted to smoke, I would. So respect the choices of others if you want us to respect your choice of smoking.

5. Propose to smoke outside

If you enter somebody’s home and you want to have a smoke, propose to your host that you want to go outside to do this. If your friends don’t mind you smoking inside the house, they will probably tell you. Asking to smoke inside is in my opinion always a bit rude and direct (your host is after all left with a room filled with smoke and a smell that won’t disappear so quickly).

4. Don’t assume

Even though we live in a society with a large percentage of smokers, you should never assume that everybody is ok with it. If you go out with somebody and you want to have a smoke, just ask them if they would mind when you smoke in their presence. From my own experience, I must say that most of the time you won’t face any objections.

3. Clean up after yourself

If you smoke in somebody’s house, or in their car, then try to be clean and don’t leave your ashes and stumps lying around. They were friendly enough to let you smoke, so don’t mess up their stuff.

2. Don’t blow smoke into a non-smoker’s face

Going to a pub is usually smoke intensive enough for my taste (yes, there is still no smoking ban in Luxembourg concerning pubs). The smoky smell tends to stick to your clothes, so the last thing you need is some jerk-off blowing fumes into your face.

1. Control your habit

The thing that bothers me most is when you are hanging out with somebody who smokes and they constantly have to take small breaks to have a cigarette. Be it while watching a movie, playing a game, or simply having a meal, there is nothing as disturbing as somebody leaving every 30 minutes because they can’t control their addiction. If you can’t sit through a movie, a meal or a 2 hour car ride, without getting the shivers, you’re doing it WRONG!

This list is not supposed to point out general negative points about smokers. Most of the people I know would never do these things anyway. Of course it should also be said that non-smokers can be a pain too. If you don’t smoke and if you maybe even hate it, try to be tolerant. Don’t bitch and moan about your friends smoking. If you can’t stand it, stay at home. A much better way to go about this is to make a compromise. For example you could go to a non-smoking bar one night, and then to a smoker’s club the other.

Honesty prevails!

What do you think about the truth? Should we always be honest even if we will hurt somebody’s feelings? Or is it ok to lie once in a while just to protect our friends and family? I have constantly asked myself this question in the last few years. Should you tell your friends if you think that they are making a big mistake or should they have the experience on their own and learn from it? Should you tell your partner that he/she has gained weight (to a point that you no longer find him/her attractive) and that you think he/she should do something about it? Why is it that we usually find it most difficult to tell our closest friends and family the truth? I never studied psychology but questions like these still fascinate me. Of course nobody likes to hear that they are doing something wrong or that you think something about them should change. I think if a relationship is close enough, the different parties should be able to criticize each other (as long as this is constructive criticism of course). I wouldn’t think it appropriate to simply point out something negative and not give any helpful advice on how to change it. A small amount of tough love might do wonders at certain points. Don’t accept if your friends resign and throw away important opportunities. Don’t stand idly by when you see that some bad choices are made. Your honesty might make all the difference in the world. And of course when I say be honest I don’t mean be rude. Just don’t tell them you like their new haircut if you really don’t. You can still pack it up nicely and make them feel good without lying to their faces.
So be brave and be honest. You might see that it is quite liberating.

Customer support

Do you remember the sayings “the customer is always right” and “the customer is king”? I am wondering what happened to them. I would consider myself to be a spender. Not that I don’t keep a security fund in my bank account at all times, but I am not a cheapskate. I still buy CDs and DVDs, I buy a lot of books and I also have my fair share of little electronic gadget to make my life just a little less/more complicated. If you only do your shopping online than you escape what I like to call the customer trap. When was the last time you were at a store and needed some advice from a salesperson and actually got the help that you went there for? I have been duped several times, just to give you an example: I wanted to get a faster internet provider and the salesman assured me that they could upgrade my connection to a much higher speed (he even called a person at their tech-center to confirm it to me). When I finally received the new connection passwords it turned out to have been a hoax because my connection speed was still the same.
More than once I have noticed that customers that are not very familiar with the item they want to purchase are talked into buying a more expensive product that they don’t need. It is sad to see that it is more important to dupe your customers and make a lot of money off them, than to genuinely be interested in helping them. Of course I am very well aware of the ideas behind the free market economy but I’m tired of uneducated salespeople that can’t help you because they don’t know their products. If you want to buy for example a new television it is very important to get the right information before you make a purchase, or you will end up with a device that is ten times more advanced than you actually can use (the new HD standards are not used everywhere and most people don’t really understand the difference between standard SDTV and modern 720p and 1080p HDTV, a difference that has an enormous impact on the price range). So what happened to the friendly helpful salesperson? The last time I met one was when I went to the PC Spezialist branch in Trier. The main board of my new computer was defective due to an error I made while installing the CPU so I had them check it out. At first they told me that it was busted and that I had to buy a new one but then they tried to clean the whole thing and it paid off. The technician gave it an extra effort and thereby saved me a lot of money. Money I would probably have spent in their store. But since they did not try to rip me off I will probably go there more often from now on.
So here is an idea: try to be nice to your customers and ACTUALLY help them for a change, you might find out that it pay off and that they will return because a satisfied customer is a good customer.

The Effect of Old Age

In the past decades modern medicine has made unbelievable advances and if you lead a relatively healthy life (that means no smoking and no excessive drinking and binge eating) and are not a victim of a freak accident, you will probably grow very old. After having worked almost their whole life, you would expect people to be happy to retire and use all their new won free time to do all the things they missed out on for the past years. I know several people above the age of 70 and something that tends to strike me, is their belief that they are constantly ill and will die soon. Of course after a certain age the human body is prone to sickness, but even if the doctors ensure a clean bill of health they are convinced that something is wrong with them. I don’t want to insinuate that every person over 70 is a hypochondriac but sadly it often seems that way. It must be frustrating to outlive your friends and close relatives and it might even awaken a feeling of despair or depression.
When I talk about these old people I don’t mean any disrespect. For example I used to have the utmost respect for my grandfather but his constant obsession with his own mortality has it made very difficult to talk to him in the last few years. He has always been a very healthy person (except for his minor heart attack a few years back which he survived without any medical consequences) and I have always found it astonishing how he was still able to chop wood or work in his workshop at the age of over 80. But during the last few years he has been convinced that he will die soon and has given up. He doesn’t care about anything important anymore, ignores his family (two daughters and 4 grandchildren) and waits to be taken by Death. It is very painful to witness the decline of a loved one and it even makes me angry. He is now 86 years old and even managed to get his driver’s licence renewed last year. Unfortunately after Christmas he became so obsessed with the idea that something is wrong with him and so he had to go to a hospital and since then he has not been able to leave even though the doctors say he is fine. He is so convinced that he is dying that they cannot release him (he needs a lot of care now since he has given up and does not want to leave the bed) and it has also been impossible to place him at a retirement home (even though he bought himself a place in a care facility just for such a case). Not that his family wants him out of the way. It is just impossible to give him the care he need at home.
Well I am drifting of my point. My grandfather has always been a person who wanted to be on top of things. He read several newspapers every day, was politically invested and had strong opinions about the world and current events (who could blame him after having witnessed a war himself). This obsession (I really can’t think of another word here) has ruined what could have been a very healthy and productive retirement for him. He even started to write down his memories of the war but gave up because it was too painful. I always wanted to record his experiences so that the horrible events of the World War II would not be forgotten. It is sad to see that nothing is of any joy to him anymore. Worst of all is his apparent anger at the world, which he displays in anger fits he hurls at his visitors. It makes it very difficult for his children to visit him because he usually treats them like servants and strangers (even though he is not senile).
I hope I myself will be able to enjoy the rest of my life and use all the time I have been given to the fullest. I would really love to hear from some of my readers here. What are your opinions on this topic? Do you agree with me? Or do you think I am being too harsh with him? Please feel free to comment.

Opium for the masses!

It has been quite a while since I last turned on my television, just to get some entertainment. I live in Luxembourg, so most channels are German or French. Scripted programming is usually translated in either of those languages and the big shows from the US are shown here with a delay of at least a year. So if I want to watch any of these shows in English and without the horrendous amount of commercial intermissions I have to watch them on my computer. This just to give you an idea of where I’m coming from.
Now the thing I’d like to rant about is the lack of intelligent programming that has been around for the last decade. When I was a kid, you could turn on your TV and watch a show that had a story and usually a decent amount of entertainment value, sure we had stupid shows like “Married with Children” or “Sledge Hammer” but even these were coherent and meant to entertain; to make you laugh. There were no talk shows, no courtroom “dramas”, almost no reality TV whatsoever. It all started with “Big Brother”, when a bunch of total idiots and social outcasts were locked up in a house and watched day and night. Somehow this voyeuristic concept that would make George Orwell roll in his grave sparked an “entertainment” concept that introduced new shows on a monthly basis into the ether. We now have shows that portray trials in a “real” courtroom, camps with celebrities that are filmed 24/7, girls in bikinis that talk about their body issues (YES there really is a show like that!), etc. The new seasons of “American Idol” and its German counterpart “Deutschland sucht den Superstar” illustrate my point perfectly. The viewer is not supposed to think while watching but to gloat, and to feel Schadenfreude and later on (after the casting shows) even laugh and cry with the contestants. Three moronic judges treat other people like dirt in the name of entertainment and nobody takes issue with this. Seems we all like to laugh at the misery of others just a bit too much to care. Well I guess that’s a good thing, just think what would happen if we started to feel sorry for people that are worse off than us… We might even want to help them! OH NOES! (I know I’m taking a big leap here and a lot of you will not agree with me, but in my opinion the lack of empathy is one of our major problems at the moment. It keeps us from taking issue with poverty and war, as long as we are tucked away happily in our homes.)
The current writers guild strike might seem like a bad thing for the viewer and the networks, but let’s be honest, what better excuse could there ever be for the networks to produce more mind numbing and stupefying shows? Especially in the US where the government wants to keep its people as dumb as possible, quality TV, that might help to keep the viewers critical and interested in a wider variety of topics, is like poison. If the audience still watches TV when there are only reality shows left, then why should the networks finance extremely expensive shows like “Lost”, if they don’t need them anymore? Just keep them clapping their hands like monkeys while the newest one-week-wonders are created, or the “American Gladiators” smash their competition. Just think of the repercussions if they would watch truthful news (which there thankfully are none) and open their minds!
Thank you reality TV for helping us fulfill our full potential. Being FAT and DUMB!

War is peace / Freedom is Slavery / Ignorance is Strength

What grinds my gears!

I’m writing this to vent and maybe also to get a general idea of what other people think, so feel free to comment.
Being a student in my last semester, I can’t help but wonder, how most people see their life, and themselves in it. In the last few years I finished a lot of different courses and all of them have one thing in common: most of the work is done with presentations. You might say: that’s a good thing; people learn how to talk in front of others, express themselves clearly and use modern media in the process. Sadly I have to say that on the receiving end, this usually is nothing but boring.
How is it, that in a room full of people who study English, most of them are unable to speak two sentences in a row without raping the English language on the level of vocabulary or grammar. All of them have had extensive studies in the field, for at least six to seven years before they even started their university studies. At this moment I should probably mention that I’m a student at Trier in Germany, so English is not the native language, but acquired through second language studies in school. So yes, to attain the level of somebody whose mother tongue is English, is very difficult. But if you have difficulty expressing yourself and don’t know the grammar of a language, why would you study it at a university? Worst of all, most of these people are planning to become teachers and TEACH our children later on. To come back to the topic of presentations, the lack of language skill is the first problem you will encounter when you are part of the audience during a group presentation. Most of the time, the person who tries to present a topic (and remember this is with the goal of TEACHING everybody in the room something) has no idea how to express him/herself in a comprehensive way. This usually ends in a stuttering, and searching for words, that makes it difficult if not impossible to follow. Second, and that is something that I had to witness again today with painful agony, is the lack of technological knowledge.
Ok I consider myself to have a knack for technology, be it a computer or a simple DVD-player, but I’m still under the impression that it doesn’t take a degree in quantum physics to work either of those two. I’ll just take today’s example to make my point: A group of three students was doing a presentation on Fritz Lang’s movie “The big Heat” and for this purpose they had planned to show several scenes during their speech. However it seemed to be utterly impossible to work the DVD-player to a point that I had to ask myself if the design of a remote control is still too difficult for a UNIVERSITY STUDENT!!!! The play, pause, stop, forward, rewind buttons have been around for over twenty years now, nobody changes them, the design is so universally standardized that you could work it even if the language aids written besides the buttons where in Japanese. Still this group did not manage to skip to a different scene without excessive rewinding, and forwarding and sometimes even restarting the whole DVD just for the fun of it. I was under the impression we were in the 21st century and technology was not new to us, but apparently some of us still cook with fire and roll a stone in front of their cave at night.
Considering that it takes at least five years to finish your studies in Germany (six years to be realistic) it is disappointing that you have to waste your time, sitting through unprepared presentations where you are supposed to learn something only to listen to people jabber on about eeeh, aaah, oooh, I can’t remember the word, what was it, where was I, etc. Leaving the room after such a session and feeling dumber than before was not what I had in mind when I signed up for my studies…