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Step 1: Put Clothes in

Step 2: Choose a random setting and pray

Step 3: Wait for clothes to wash 3 hours later

Step 4: Cry when you see that your clothes have all but disintegrated

Step 5: Go shopping

But really the go-to setting seems to be Bunt-Koch 30º-40º (in Celcius, of course)

These machines in Germany are supposed to be more eco-friendly but as a trade off they take really reallly long. I guess it saves water somehow but this seems like it would take loads of electricity. Even the “quick setting” takes like 1 hour and 17 minutes! Normal seems to be about 2 hours and Pre-washing is about 2 hours and 15 minutes.

Also machines are small here, so you will be doing more loads. Or you can be like me of course and have an actual life. So just jam everything in their anyway and hope for the best!

Oh, and also, you might be wondering how I dry things…

I don’t!

Have to hang em up on these rack things. I would take a picture, but I probably shouldn’t post other people’s undies to the internet.

I’m considering making a try to this Waschsalon (German Laundromat) down the street since I miss having a dryer.

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More details coming soon…

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Try not to be overwhelmed with excitement…

[Show as slideshow]

And what do I do after work you may ask? Oh a little of this and a little of that. I mostly unwind with some internet, music or a movie or maybe unwind and hang out with friends or my roommates.

I am just a (sort of) normal resident with a full-time job. ;-)

Anyways, you asked for the update, so here you are. I never was very good at being a tourist. Maybe it’s because I’m from Miami, and I’m a bit snobby about that. Plus, Gießen is a pretty basic town. I’m actually quite okay with that, I got most of the “Woooowww I’m in Germany” stuff out of my system when I was studying abroad in Munich.

But I’ll try and keep your guys posted on my weekend excursions!

Tchuß!

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Lufthansa 747 rests next to a Frankfurt lounge | by angeloangelo on Flickr

Hello all!

I am now writing this from Giessen, Germany.

In case you were not aware, I am doing an internship in Germany.

I’ll definitely need to brush up on my German, but in any case, the Miami to Frankfurt flight with Lufthansa was OK.

They have a great in-flight entertainment system. I just wish that I could have heard it better over all the crying babies. And for some strange reason, the Frankfurt airport was BOILING. I have no idea why they need to have it so hot in there. I probably looked like some sweating weirdo while going through passport control.

But otherwise, it was a pretty uneventful trip–which is good news since you really don’t want a complicated airplane trip in the first place.

The AIESECers were ready and waiting to pick me up in the airport. They had no problem finding me–after all, I doubt it would be exceptionally difficult to pick me out in a typical crowd in Germany. ;)

We had a nice game of tetris as we squeezed my somewhat oversized bags into cute, but tiny lil’ Fiat. But as the AIESECers explained, we’re students, so we were GOING to figure out how to get this in!

We eventually squeezed ourselves and the 3 monuments of my overpacking habit into the car and we were off to Giessen. We stopped by the grocery store, since AIESEC Giessen so nicely buys the 25 euros worth of food when they arrive.

After that, we went to my new apartment. I admittedly was alarmed by the outside, since it’s not the prettiest, plus, there this junky old van with a flat tire in the back yard! But I was definitely relieved to find that inside looked wayyy better. Plus, I have the largest room. The girl that I rented it from left all the decorations and furnishing in here, which is cool. I even got a nice flat screen monitor to hook up the laptop and watch movies.

I need to remember to take pictures during the daylight hours at some point after I figure out how to navigate jet lag from the 6 hour time difference.

We dropped my things off and then went to the city hall or “Rathaus” in order to get myself registered as a resident. I am officially a local resident in Germany! We were supposed to go to the foreigner’s office too, but since they make no sense, they had some weird hours on Thursday and weren’t open at all on Friday!

Oh well, I’ll get to it eventually.

I also have two roommates, of course. A half-German half-Irish grad student, and a German guy. The half-Irish one speaks really good English. So, I’ll really have to be careful and force myself to try and speak German once in a while. But she can really talk your ear off!

We took a walk afterward to pick up a guitar from a friends house and stop by the corner store. Giessen is very much walkable.

For the rest of the night, I unpacked, watch Mad Men, and managed to trip the circuit breaker.

On Friday, I overslept like crazy, and then I met up with a former AIESEC intern to get a bank account and a phone plan. So, 5 phone shops, 3 buses, 2.5 banks and 1 surprise bus pass inspection from one of those plain-clothes German inspectors, the mission was accomplished!

Well that’s all for now for my Germany update!

Bis später!

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xtradefactory | create your life

I’m just taking a moment to brag.

I’m going off to work in Germany! I will be living in Gießen (about 40 minutes north from Frankfurt) and working for this cool little company called xtradefactory GmbH.

It’s a paid placement, and I will be doing Internet Marketing.

I found this through AIESEC, which is a wonderful program that I recommend for any student who is considering an internship/co-op abroad!

To say that I’m excited is an understatement! I get to combine my two loves–going abroad and marketing.

If you’re a student and you want to do something like this, definitely let me know, and I’ll try to help you. I want to see more people like me in these kinds of programs!

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Photo by imagesbyk2 Photography

My knowledge is mostly centered around getting US phones to work abroad. Also it’s more directed toward people who don’t have a clue. However, I suck at explaining phone standards in lamens terms, so if you don’t know what GSM and CDMA are, this PC Mag article is a good read.

Otherwise my somewhat inaccurate rule of thumb is:

• If your phone has a little removable card/chip that that looks like this (SIM card), then it is probably a GSM phone. (These include AT&T, T-Mobile, and some MNVO’s–which are smaller companies that run off of those same phone towers)
• If your phone does not have that little removable card/chip then it is probably a CDMA phone (CDMA providers are the majority in the US and inclue Verizon, Sprint/Nextel, MetroPCS, VirginMobile etc.).

So I guess my tip is if you want the same phone to work abroad areas like Europe or Latin America with the least amount of pain, it is easiest to stick with GSM provider like AT&T, T-Mobile, or a GSM-using MNVO (like Straight Talk, for example) and make sure your handset is unlocked or can be unlocked. Although, do note that unlocking a locked headset that was subsidized by a company isn’t quite legal anymore. However, if you’re off your contract close to done, you can generally ask them nicely to unlock it for you.

Otherwise, I won’t get into further unlocking details, but usually a google search with the phone model and the word “unlock” usually turns up some info.

What if it’s not GSM?

Well more modern handsets from CDMA companies like Verizon and such are allowing the possibility for a SIM card. iPhone 4S and upward have this ability, and I believe that some other smart phones can as well but that’s not guaranteed in every phone.

Personally, since I travel so much, I stick with GSM out of convenience.

In order to get a CDMA phone to work on a different network, you’d have to find someone willing to add the serial number to a special list somewhere (good luck finding a non-sketchy service for that). Or, for the more technologically adventurous, you could attempt modifying/spoofing the ESN to look like one that’s allowed on that network.

If that sounds like a lot to do for a short-term trip–well, it is. It’s easier to just buy or rent another cheapo phone.

Or if you will be making very few calls, it might be worth it to just let the phone go into roaming and use it for emergencies (and turn off the data to avoid those high data roaming rates). This assumes the phone has the frequencies to work in a different country in the first place, and that is really hit or miss. But the ones that advertise themselves as being world phones will generally work, and the ones advertising as quadbands might work. But don’t take my word for it, call up your phone company and ask about rates for traveling abroad.

I hope that helps any budding world travelers.

This is just my knowledge based on what I’ve picked up over the years trying to use my various cell phone in different countries (Trinidad and Tobago/Brazil/Germany/UK) and minimizing charges. I am not a hardware expert, but I can try to help.

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Photograph by Jason Alden/Bloomberg

I read this article from Bloomberg Businessweek and I felt compelled to comment.

Is there a real strategy or are they just going to do minor updates and poach Google Execs?

And what is Yahoo really good at, that I should use them?

Yahoo Finance and Flickr are pretty good. Maybe they should they keep making really good niches until they surround users? I don’t really know, but it’s going to take a lot to get people like me to stop “Googling”.

After taking the reins last summer, [Mayer] announced she would return $3 billion in cash to shareholders, mostly from the proceeds of selling half of Yahoo’s stake in Alibaba Group Holdings, a Chinese e-commerce firm.

And what’s up with giving up Alibaba? Even though China’s growth is slowing, it’s still way higher than ours in the Western world. Alibaba-owned sites are already entrenched as some of the biggest online marketplaces in China.

Yahoo stock is up more than 4 percent in after-hours trading.

80% growth of Alibiba’s holdings were reported by Forbes…(and that was their slow growth!)

Since math says 80% > 4% so I’m trying to see the logic of getting rid of your stake in this, Yahoo.

Anyways, I’m no CEO, so I suppose time will tell. Like Mrs. Mayer says herself, the quarter was only her first full one at the company.

Mayers: “Yahoo is about making the world’s daily habits more inspiring and entertaining,”

Yeah, um what is that supposed to mean?

This is why I am not a fan of mission statements. (But it’s good to have goals I guess.)

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