Die Hard Three

I have all these ideas that I think are brilliant. The problem is that it’s possible (but unlikely) that they are not actually brilliant at all. Maybe a given idea has been tried before and it does not work. Maybe there’s a non-obvious reason for why something is not done a certain way and this unknown reason totally outweighs the benefits of change.

I think I know why the condiment companies have not standardized on container sizes. Raw materials and transpiration are still relatively cheap, there is no immediate increase in profit and there’s an inability (unwillingness?) to be forward-looking beyond the next 1-3 years.

French’s Mustard aside, I’m going to present some ideas I’ve had and I need you to tell me why they suck. As you can imagine they are mostly bathroom-related however some of them can be transferred to the rest of the house.

For this post I’m going to talk about corners. I hate them. When I’m cleaning my bathroom the hardest areas to clean are where two or three flat surfaces meet and the angle of intersection is 90 degrees or less. So my question is why don’t we simply make bathrooms that are devoid of corners? Here are some of the reasons I was able to come up with:

• cornerless rooms look stupid
• it’s too expensive (increased cost in time, materials, complexity)
• they are harder to repair
• they wear down faster
• it makes the room smaller
• they make the room dangerous (maybe humans are not used to navigating cornerless environments)
• it makes it impossible to place items against the wall
• bathrooms are designed and built by people who never have to clean them so they don’t actually think about how make an easily-cleanable bathroom
• we’ve always made them with corners
• cornerless rooms exist they are just not popular (but this begs the question “why are they not popular?”)

Which reasons am I missing here?

I’m in the process of planning to build a cornerless bathroom and I have the feeling I’m about to embark on something that is either groundbreakingly awesome or incredibly stupid.

But if my list is accurate then I am 100% going to move forward with this project. I don’t think any of the items on that list are reason enough to not build a cornerless bathroom.

And visitors to my house will be invited to clean my bathroom and they will see how easy it is. And then they will want cornerless rooms of their own.

Here is my cornerless bathroom design.

The Vim is under the sink.

The goal of this trip was to visit with friends from faraway lands. This report will be broken into three sections describing various events of note.

Team Lyon

The only native member of Team Lyon was AWOL so we had to make due with substitutes. We had Elise from Marseille and Romain (her former roommate) who is from Montpellier. Some good fortune to start the evening: with only the smallest amount of planning (i.e. see you in Lyon on Friday evening) my and Elise’s trains arrive at the same station within 10 minutes of each either.

We have a few drinks and some wonderful pasta at Romain’s place. A few other people show up throughout the evening. Around midnight Elise, Romain and I set out with two other french guys (Theo and Simon) and spend an hour walking around in the rain to find a pub where some of their friends are hanging out. When we finally get there we are denied entrance because Theo had left his identification at home. This is strange because he’s twenty-seven and the drinking age in France is like fifteen or something. By this time it’s 02:00 and I’ve been awake for about twenty-six hours. Theo grabs a cab and drops me off at my hotel. This is the first cab I’ve taken the whole trip.

The next day I check out of my hotel and walk over to some random Irish pub to work on my blog post. I saw a number of bathroom and window stores along the way but they were all closed for lunch (stores in France are closed from 12:00 -14:00 every day)

You can insert your own joke about how Germany is the economic engine of the EU

Another bit of good luck in that the pub I randomly chose is only two minutes from Romain’s apartment (where Elise is crashing). I’m the only customer in the entire pub. As I’m writing away, this couple who were at Romain’s the previous evening saunter in looking for breakfast (it was 13:30). I find it a really strange sensation to be in a city of a million people where I know seven and two of them pick the same restaurant I did.

So after much discussion about not going to the cinema for three months, we all went to see the new Tintin movie in the afternoon. I loved every minutes of it.  Except for the scene with the giant spiders. I don’t like spiders.

After the film we grab a drink and I almost missed my train to Grenoble. It was underestimated how much time it would take to go by metro to the train station. I had to sprint the last 500 metres and I didn’t even have time to buy my ticket – it cost me an extra 11 euros to purchase it on the train.

Team Grenoble

The best turnout came from Team Grenoble, all members present and accounted for. On Sunday Claudine, her boyfriend David, and I went to the market and did some shopping. I’m planning on making a special meal for my favorite person over Christmas and I managed to purchase the main ingredient (two quantities: a large and a small). The plan is to cook a practice meal over here in Germany with the small one. This will enable me to be ready for the main event back in Canada. I hope those border service people don’t confiscate it. That would really suck.

In the afternoon we visited a castle in a small village about 40 minutes from Grenoble. There’s not much I can say better than my iPhone camera can.

And we also visited the first ever structure built with reenforced concrete. I was very happy to see this.

The world would be a completely different place without reenforced concrete.

On Sunday evening we had a meet-up with the other members of Team Grenoble. Petra was part of Team 144 from Sept 2010 to April 2011. I paid her final cell phone bill and she said she would recompense me in beer. This has got to be the furthest I’ve ever gone to collect a pint. Was delicious.

I can’t think about Nathalie without getting confused. She has German parents, a German last name, but she speaks English, French, and German fluently – sans accent. She grew up in Grenoble but I know her through one of the German members of Team 144 (Benjamin Sept 2006 – April 2007). She was on an exchange in Toronto and the previous time we met up was in Bonn in 2010. My head hurts just trying to get all this straight. So I keep thinking she’s German but she’s probably more French but when she speaks English she sounds like she’s from America. Anyway, was good to catch up.

While in Grenoble. I couldn’t help but look at these beautiful trams and wonder if they would work in Ottawa. They could replace all the buses running between Hurdman and Lebreton Flats. Way cheaper than digging a tunnel. More on this later.

Team Bonn/Siegburg

The largest team is Bonn/Siegburg – it’s full compliment numbers ten (eleven if you include baby Frederic). As I only had a four-hour layover in Koln and most people had to work it was a very quick visit. Benjamin met up with me for about 40 minutes. We had some supper, a beer and we caught up on all the goings-on from the past 18 months since I last visited.

I’m going to be back in Bonn/Siegburg on Dec 4th. I’ll have the whole day so it will be a much less rushed visit. Plus Weinacheten Markt!

Another difference between FR and DE is their philosophy for how passengers pay for the subway. Germany (and the Netherlands) have the honour system – there are no physical barriers preventing one from using it without paying. They have random inspections to verify you have the correct ticket. In France (and London) there are automated gates set up where people have to submit proof of payment before getting access.

I would love to know which is more effective. The cost to install and maintain all those gates at every single station, mien Gott! You could pay a lot of ticket inspectors. The Germans also benefit from a law that requires people in the country to carry identification. The I-forgot-my-wallet-at-home excuse will not work here as often as it does elsewhere. The on-the-spot fines are reasonable (I think 40 Euros for a first offense). If I had to guess I would say that the German/Dutch one is better. It definitely allows for the passengers to have a more pleasant experience using the system. Especially if one has to run to catch a train. With a walker. Or luggage. Or a stroller loaded with babies.

So these gates work like this: you insert your single-use ticket and as you step forward you collect your ticket and these two glass panels slide open, you step through, and they quickly close behind you. If you are carrying bulky baggage (i.e. a couple of toilets) you need to go through this special gate. I’m not sure how the special gates are supposed to function. It seems like they are ripe for abuse as they are open longer to accommodate people who are slowed down by hockey equipment and wheeled luggage.

When I got to Paris North Gare I had to take the Metro to Lyon Gare Paris. So I’m in line to buy my ticket and I’m standing right next to the automated gates. I swear it was as if Just For Laughs had set up some cruel gag where the passengers who are in a hurry to make a connection are prevented from getting to the subway.

So this one bulky baggage gate is not working and there are passengers who are late to catch their trains. They insert their tickets. And the gate doesn’t open. They try again. No effect. These people are desperate and understandably so. The high-speed French trains *require* you to have a reservation. If you miss your train you have to sleep outside under a bridge like a common troll.

Now during this time, the other gates are working fine – the regular people are passing through effortlessly on their way to their operas and coffee dates and wine tasting contests. The desperate people can see this and several of them try to get through the regular gates with varying degrees of success. Here are the most common techniques executed, as told from the point of view of the condemned:

• me first, then luggage. Result: gate closed on arm or bag
• me rushing with luggage clutched to chest. Result: smashing into gate – gate does not open as hands not free to retrieve ticket
• me with luggage balanced on head. Result: luggage falls to the side, clobbers passenger in the adjacent gate
• me first, then you throw me the baby. Result: Child Services called
• me go through, leave the luggage behind. Result: bomb squad called because of a suspicious package

I had almost two hours to make my connection so I simply bought a snack and watched the chaos for about fifteen minutes. I kept expecting some French Canadian guy to walk up to these poor people and tap them on the shoulder and point towards some hidden cameraman who’s been filming the whole thing.

It never came to pass.

I’m getting behind in my blog posts. This is what happens when my routine gets disrupted. What a strange word, disrupted. Is it possible for one to be “rupted”? I think I’ll call the Apple help desk to find out. Anyway, these past few days have been ones of change and nuance. The rents are visiting from Canada and I had a weekend trip to France with a stopover in western Germany. The goal was to visit with Teams Lyon, Grenoble, and Bonn/Siegburg.

I’d been so used to living in Germany that France felt like a different planet. The train station in Paris (North Gare) is a terminus and not a pass-through like most of the German bahnhofs. France has an amazing train network but it is fundamentally different from the German one. It is more like a unicycle wheel with the hub being Paris and spokes are the rail lines going to the different regions. The German rail system is a grid with trains zipping all over the place.

Pairs has dedicated train stations servicing the different regions of the country (North Gare, Lyon Gare, East Gare, West Gare, South-South-West Gare, etc). So if there is a disruption (reminder: call Apple) on one of the lines, only that region is affected. Because the German rail network is a matrix (not The Matrix – but wouldn’t that be cool!) it is possible for a single incident to cascade and affect different parts of the country.

The stations themselves are also much simpler as there are no overhead walkways or tunnels to get to the main hall. You just walk to the end of the track and over to the next track. London is like this too. In the Netherlands all trains pass through Utrecht Main Station. There was a fire there once and the whole country shut down. In engineering we call this a single point of failure.

And finally, because Paris has no central station it means that one has to take the subway between the different stations to make your connecting train.

I love trains

This is the first time I’ve left Berlin since I arrived (Day 10). This makes forty days I’ve stayed in one place that is not Ottawa. This breaks my previous record of twenty-two days when I was in London in Dec 1997/Jan 1998. That was an awesome trip. Here is what I remember about that one:

Titanic (the movie not the ship) was supposed to come out in July 1997 but it was not ready so they moved back the release date to Friday December 19. I’m a huge James Cameron fan and at the time he was five for five: Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, Terminator 2, True Lies. My flight to London was on Thursday December 18 – I was going to have to wait an eternity (three weeks) to see it as it was not being released in the UK until the new year. This was causing me some anxiety.

So by some miracle (I forget how) I managed to score a pass to the premiere on Wednesday December 16. I was out of the country when it was officially released so I missed all the initial hoopla. I’m pretty into movies, and as much as liked the film I was shocked when I got back home to hear that it was destroying all the box office records. One of the guys I worked with took his family three times to see it and each time it was sold out. *

Also being released on December 19 of that same year was the new James Bond movie, Tomorrow Never Dies. As much as it sucked I remember thinking it was cool that I got to see it at the massive Odeon theatre in Leicester Square in London. Again I was lucky because they had released it a week earlier in the UK.

Holy crap, has this blog been reduced to me talking about movies from 15 years ago?

Was it ever anything more?

Nope.

My current trip presents a similar first world problem because The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is going to be released the day *before* I return to Canada. This will break my streak of seeing David Fincher’s movies on opening night.

But strangely enough during my 50 days overseas I’ve only watched one episode of the Daily Show (English) and two South Parks (in German for practice) and I have not even gone to the cinema. If I can make it until Dec 23 this might be another record: 15 weeks with no movies.

Thank being said, if that fighting robot movie is playing in Berlin I might try and go see that with my dad. We’re both huge fans of robot-on-robot violence. And I like going to to the cinema in foreign countries. It’s the same as home but just a little bit different. For example, in Germany one can get beer at the concession stand. In Canada that is verboten. In Europe there’s a lot more nudity in the previews – even the ones showing before family movies. Note for those of you searching for the root cause of the European financial crisis: you need look no further.

Anyway, back to 97/98. January 1998 was the year of the big ice storm in Ottawa-Montreal. I remember watching CNN in London and seeing all the reporting about my hometown. There was much talk of power outages, work stoppages, looting, and cannibalism but when I got back home the power had not even blipped at my house. I know this because my VCR** had successfully recorded all my shows (X-Files and Simpson’s).

* Note for all you haters out there – the movie had not yet been released, and in my opinion Cameron made it six for six – the love story was cheesy but I found everything else about Titanic just great.
** A VCR is a PVR from the 80s and 90s.

Today, Day 49, is officially the half way point of my time in Europe. Shortly after I started this blog I realized that I’d screwed up the titles. <Day – Number-of-Days-Since-Departure> doesn’t really indicate anything save the amount of time I’ve been out of Canada. If I’d gotten it right I would have used <Day – Number-of-Days-Since-Departure of Total-Number-of-Days-in-Journey>. It would have helped provide more context for where I am in my journey.

There’s a perfect sports analogy for this.

When it comes to the clock, ice hockey has soccer beat, hands down. Hockey starts at 20:00 and counts down to 00:00. Pretty easy. Soccer on the other hand starts at 00:00 and ends at approximately 45:00. What use is this? I mean, who really cares how far one is into the game? What matters is how much time is remaining. This is especially frustrating for new spectators to the sport. We’re continually asking the guy next to us how much time is left. And the overtime is a different duration than the regulation time! They could easily solve this problem by just starting at 90:00 or 30:00 or whatever and counting down to zero. Extra time? That’s why God invented negative numbers.

But like many problems in the world, this one will never get fixed because “it’s always been that way”. It’s too bad because soccer has some really big problems that need to be addressed. And if they can’t fix the easy ones, what chance do they have with the difficult ones?

I’ve often wondered why books don’t do this (count down instead of up). Note: I’m aware that Chuck Palahniuk did this for his Survivor novel. But with a book you actually know when it’s going to end because there are visual and tactile indicators of how much is left. To find out you simply open the book to the place where the stuff you have not read and the stuff you have read converge. Then you take the book with both hands and compare the amount of pages between each index finger and thumb. If the one on the right is a lot smaller than the one on the left, you are close to the finish.

And if there are zero pages in your right hand, the book is over.

I want to be clear that they should NOT do this with movies. I personally hate knowing the duration of a movie. When I go in there I want to be surprised. About everything. And nowadays it’s a lot of work to shield oneself from this information. The movie duration is all over the Internet. And if you have to decide at what time to see the film, the spacing of the showings can give away how long it is. There’s one show at 19:00 and one at 22:00, thanks a lot MovieTickets.com.

I might actually take this opportunity to change the convention I’ve been using. WordPress has a feature where you can go back and make minor edits to each post. The title is one of the things you can change without much fuss.

and I’m not, I would make a few changes around here. First up would be packaging. I am absolutely sick and tired of how products are packaged – specifically in the grocery store.

Before I get started I want to concede that some industries have got their act together. The Canadian domestic beer companies (Molson, Labatts) have standardized their bottles and they have a system in place to have them recycled. This is good. Some of the juice and milk providers have done the same with their cartoned beverages. Also good.

But others are not so organized. The makers of condiments have all sorts of wacky designs for their containers that, while pretty to look at, could be more efficient. Here’s what I mean.

Most jars are round. Not all, but most. A jar with a radius of 5 cm and a height of 10 cm will have a volume of about 785 cm cubed (if we assume the jar is a cylinder). Now a cube-shaped container of the same dimensions would have a volume of 1000 cm cubed (I can’t find the superscript). This is a 21.5% increase in volume! But there is a cost – your cylinder jar has a surface area of 417 cm sq. while the cube-shaped one has 30.5% more surface area (600 cm sq.)

Requiring industry to not use cylindrical jars would result in increased costs that would be offset by two things:

1. requiring every company to use the same style of containers – with increased production comes decreased unit cost
2. providing paid recycling serves for said containers – with a large enough system it becomes way cheaper to recycle than it does to make new containers

I also have a question: when you return beer bottles to the Beer Store for recycling – they clean the bottles and just refill them with beer, right? They’re not melting down the glass or anything crazy like that are they? But what happens to the empty jar of Grey Poupon (from my roommates) that goes in my recycling at home? Does it actually make it back to the Grey Poupon people? My guess is no.

The way I look at it is this: we (society) need to be more responsible with our resources. Reusing our containers is a great start. Maximizing the amount of product contained within them is also important (next time you open a two-four of beer look at all the empty (wasted) space around the bottles). To reduce congestion (and delivery costs) in our inner cities we’re going to have come up with a series of tubes (I’m not joking) to deliver physical object to people’s homes (or close-by depot stations). If the government has standardized on sizes of containers for food and other products, the tube delivery system will be that much easier to implement – if it’s not standard, it doesn’t go in the tube!

In Germany they’ve gone part way on this initiative – all plastic bottles are refundable and they have a very elaborate system of recycling in place. Also because in Europe there is less space than in North America, Europeans tend to design things more size-effectively – their cars are a classic example of this.

I would give industry 10 years to get their act together – come up with container standards for all food items. Tabasco and Heinz would be freaking out because they would say that their unique bottle is part of their brand and their business would suffer. Well I love their products and I would tell them to get stuffed. The times, they are a changing.

We live on an island, people.

If you don't want your grandkids to be living in Mad Max times, you have to start thinking about things like this.

In the past 3 weeks I’ve had 10 different people visit me here in Berlin. This is a much higher number than I had anticipated. A good 80% of these people were here for other reasons and their travel just happened to intersect with my journey. But 20% were here just to see me (and some churches).

There’s a certain overhead that one has to deal with when hosting people. It takes time to get familiar with a new city and it can be doubly-bad if you have a local “tour guide”. You guide has most likely gone through the steps of figuring out how everything works and if you just follow him around you run the risk of getting lost if you are out alone.

This is why today when I went to collect the rents at the Flughafen and it was time to leave, I simply gave them a subway map and told them the name of the station and the subway line it was on. They had to work through the whole exercise of finding the station and figuring out the connections. When we got to each station they had to use the signs to determine the location of the new line as well as the direction we needed to go.

It’s slow going and it’s more work for me in the short term. But the payoff is that once they figure out how the system works, we can take the training wheels off and they can graduate to free-range tourists. It’s better for everyone. Especially me.

Here is your cab fare.

There is one man who has saved my life on dozens of occasions during this trip. And his work is not finished yet – I’m here for another 7.3 weeks. I am of course talking about Ampelmannchen. He’s the one who regulates the pedestrian traffic at intersections here in Berlin.

He comes in two forms. Green:

The light. The light is green!

And red:

Stop!

Mr. Ampelmannchen has a lot of work to do around the city. At some intersections he can be found with up to 24 of his friends. The main streets here in Berlin are quite large. At some crossings you will have to pass (for example) northbound car traffic, streetcar tracks in both directions, and regular southbound traffic to get to the other side. At each of these boundaries there can be found an army of Ampelmannchen bringing order to the galaxy.

I'll never join you!

There’s also a bunch of shops around town where one can purchase various items adorned with everyone’s favorite super hero.

They're everywhere!

Sometimes he even comes to life and walks around the city. This is a very rare occurrence.

Luckily, I had my camera at the ready.