(no subject)
This post is mostly about the people whose bubbles have and floated into my own and infused the summer with such a gentle swilling riot of colour. The random conversations, jokes, smiles-unthinkingly I breathe them in and make a temporary home. Years later, when the German summer of 2012 will be to my mind but a shimmery haze, these people, their little bubbles, will still be somewhere out there: floating, popping, sticking and bouncing. And so in recording my impressions of them I'm going to try writing in something other than the usual meditative tone-this has to be bright and breezy, alive like the summer sun. Because these are real people that I'm only too glad to have known, and even as time passes and seasons change, I take heart that we live yet under the same sun.
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Each day begins with the chiming of the alarm and a disgruntled swipe across my phone screen to shush it. Next to me, my flatmate S’s bed has been empty and made for more than an hour, compelling me to straighten my covers for symmetry’s sake. While I’d earlier discovered the pleasure of a relaxing cup of Darjeeling and cereal before heading out, this practice has slipped along with my waking discipline, thanks to the realisation that I really only have to be at my desk before my supervisor comes in around 10. Actually, it doesn’t really matter if I’m later, but y’know, it’s good to keep up appearances.
The cycle to the research centre is one of the best parts of the day if it isn’t raining. Once past the rubbly roads of the residential area where workers are always renovating some house or other, I’m out into a tree-lined avenue with its flanking fields of golden wheat and poppy-speckled grass. Some distance away to the left, decades of coal mining have piled in the form of Sophienhöhe, the largest artificial hill worldwide; to the right, a white tower rises, the top of which, on clear-sky mornings, attracts a ball of light that outdazzles anything in sight-it is a solar plant harvesting the sun’s energy to boil saltwater. And so on I pedal, catching the wind in my hair as do the millions of leaves rustling above my head. Sometimes, I catch a whiff of farmhouse manure, or the sight of the back of a cute cyclist-this always motivates me to try to keep up but to no avail (danged genetics!). There is, nonetheless, always an elderly gentleman on a brisk walk with twin hiking poles, who never fails to pass by without a stately nod and friendly ‘Hallo!’ (He reminds me of the Walrus in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. Nowadays I try to preempt him.) After a mile or so of open farmland, the path enters a forest of cool dappled greens, then unexpectedly arrives at the gate of the Forschungzentrum. I wave my pass at the guard who bids me enter.
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Nestled in the cluster of IEK-5 Photovoltaics buildings is a plain second-floor office where I sit with two other PhD students, H and J. H, my supervisor, is a small and sprightly lady whose spontaneity and purposeful optimism are like a breath of fresh air in the stuffy room. She’s the kind of person who’s always busy, always doing things, whether it’s volunteering to give guided tours of the centre, or organising a farewell gift for someone, or a charity dinner…so much so that at the beginning I was wondered how she got any work done at all! I’ve since learnt the answer-a simple persistence in seeing anything she’s set her mind on through to the best of her ability. How else does one become competent in Deutsch three months after moving to Germany, not speaking a word of it and not being able to be understood through the smattering of English one learns in an early Vietnamese education? While waiting in the dark for measurements to run, or sitting at our desks, we talk about random things, such as our families and her grandmother who single-handedly raised her sons without an arm, making rice noodles and carrying them to and from the town every day of the week, eventually becoming one of the most prosperous families in the village. Sometimes we talk about our beliefs and motivations, and from her I’ve learnt what contentedness with one’s own life and a simple wish to make others happy can do to draw people together and into action. I’ve also picked up several tips on how to cook greens from the delicious tupperware meals she brings from home-why, if I knew how to transform our cellulosic friends so aromatically, I’d be vegetarian in an instant too.
From time to time the harmonious office environs is punctuated by a quibble that begins, for example, when H tries explaining something to me and J suggests a divergent point, which then takes off (as do most quibbles between stubborn people, or a bickering couple) into an exchange that serves only pedantic value but is nonetheless most amusing to a bystander, until I’m called on to arbitrate that is. J usually has a point-he is the kind of guy whom you’d expect aphorisms to come from, and a wise and measured brand of humour that makes people laugh and at which his face quirks into a delightful impish smile. One thing I will remember is his reply to my (normal lunchtime) question of what he planned to do after finishing his thesis. Most people talk about finding a job or admit to not being sure, and not many I know continue to pursue a tangible aspiration. But J’s dream was clear since high school-to promote awareness and implementation of clean sustainable energy solutions. One really can’t doubt his passion for the environment as the guy really walks the talk, be it plugging out all the computers in the room the end of the day, not taking the airplane, or knowing a lot about various power suppliers, vehicle efficiencies and the shocking number of nuclear near-disasters even in a country as functional as Germany. The couple of informal Friday evening discussions we’ve had on ‘Why should we be generous?’ and ‘People who inspire us’ were also initiatives of his. And while his valiant efforts to elicit constructive responses were often hilariously thwarted by the 30-year-old schoolboys around the table, some meaningful points did emerge from these.
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The Germans have an interesting routine for going to lunch (which has been corroborated by compatriots interning at other German companies): around a fixed time each day (12.15 in my case) people begin getting up and ambling down to the carpark. After five minutes there’d be a gathering of 8 people maybe, or 4 on busier (or emptier) days, and then we’d all walk to the cafeteria together, eat and return. Indeed, it is over the course of these lunches that S and I got to meet the aforementioned ‘schoolboys’, who are in fact PhDs and post-docs with a common interest in solar cells. They are also motivated, curious, funny and candid-easy company to be oneself in and not feel instantly judged. Another thing I appreciate is the international mix within the group. For better or worse, I tend to form snap assessments the personalities of people I meet using a heuristic that associates aspects of their speech, movements and expressions with those of people I already know, swiftly building up a composite picture. Very often I can’t quite pinpoint what it is about a person that reminds me of someone else, yet I feel sure that he/she would respond to a given event in a certain way. However, with someone from a cultural background different from ones I’ve encountered before, this becomes more difficult. Familiar traits and perspectives no longer seem to apply directly, compelling me to see things with a fresh eye and to adapt in my interactions. It is unfailingly interesting to learn new things about people and cultures, and at the same time to simply enjoy being with fellow human beings. This is something I might not have been able to say ten years ago, awkward adolescent that I was back then. (Still am, though hopefully to a lesser extent, haha.)
In my Organisational Behaviour class last Lent, we learnt about how diversity in a workplace an often be a very stimulating factor, but only if there is an extant culture that embraces difference, and that somehow finds a common denominator in which to communicate. German seems to serve this role most of the time here, but with S and I joining the fray our colleagues switch to English as best as they can. Indeed, coming from countries all over Europe, many of them speak in three or more languages, putting me to shame seeing as I haven’t even mastered my mother tongue. There is E, the Frenchman who sings and plays the guitar, very much the sensitive new age soul who believes in living in the moment and following one’s heart, except he is also a highly driven scientist who has trouble taking the breaks he’s promised himself. I was surprised when he entrusted me with the proofreading of his research paper-I’ve never written any papers myself nor worked in his field-but then a modicum intellectual humility never did anyone any harm. There is the quiet M from Poland who probably watches more American TV in a year than I ever will in my whole life. There is also the garrulous Czech M who spent a week sleeping on beaches in Minorca, and the ponytailed German M who wants to teach karate when he’s done with his PhD. The bold and bubbly L I met through our trip to Aachen and Cologne, but she’s since flown home to Shanghai. I haven’t gone a day without the trusty orange bike and SIM card she left me.
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From time to time someone pops a suggestion to do something in the evenings after work, like dinner or a movie or ice cream. It was at one of these dinners that Prof R, the head of the institute, unexpectedly came by and sat opposite me. Before he arrived in the empty seat, E diagonally across had jokingly bemoaned not getting to be his childish self during the meal, but it turned out Prof R was quite the old boy himself, and conversation swiftly moved from crazy Olympic stories to the Planet of the Apes to the historical origins of the European Carnaval, to what creativity in science is (something I never really understood)-all in all a light-hearted and enlightening evening. As for movies, thanks to S and her comic book fandom, I’ve finally watched Nolan’s Batman trilogy including his most recent outing which we had to travel to the next city to catch. Inspired by S's and my trip to Belgium, the lovely couple D and S also invited us to watch In Bruges at their place just last weekend. However, there was apparently some miscommunication about the timings, resulting in S and I arriving as D was still tidying up his parakeets’ cage. So we sat in the kitchen and S made us some delicious Dutch pancakes (small poofy things with creamy insides). E, J, M and M arrived soon after and we went for walk along the river to take ourselves off our poor hosts’ hands. The next one and a half hours basically saw the same bunch of people shuttling to and fro between E and D’s houses, with apparently nothing better to do on a Sunday night. The air was nice and cool though, and listening to the guys debating the difference between ‘artificial’ and ‘fake’ and the existence of a French cartoon with a mandolin-strumming cactus did make the neighbourhood stroll pretty entertaining. In the end it was decided that the movie be postponed to Monday. In Bruges for me was an interplay of the light and dark elements of human nature and the fairytale shithole that is Bruges, quite well done really but not entirely my cup of tea because of the pointlessness of the deaths. It also contained a record number of iterations of the F word, too much for the good-natured J who was adamant that Slovak subtitling be adopted with swear-equivalents like ‘into the wood!’ and ‘INTO THE CABBAGE!!’
It was at one of these movie sessions that we met the self-named American vegan physicist, Duck. The first thing you notice about him is his face, for which the best word I can think of is ‘beautiful’, bright and full of life. The second thing is that he can really talk a lot, but if you listen, you realise underlying his Shakespeare-meets-Internet-lingo wordsiness is a not insubstantial knowledge and passion for a whole spectrum of subjects-definitely closer to polymath than phoney. Truth be told, in a country like Germany, one-sided discourses on the inadequate portrayal of female characters in Batman, or the beleaguering lack of playfulness and obstinate moderation of the general Teutonic populace might not always be well met-I myself was initially put off by the earnestness that I’d mistook for arrogance. The difficulty of finding people who understand him, he laments in calling himself ‘often a sad duck’. And yet, it is hard not to like, or at least be fascinated, by someone so intelligent, bodacious and happy-go-lucky like that (to use his own words), someone so one-of-a-kind. We’ll be playing cards this evening and it should be good fun.
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So far I’ve said a fair bit about the people who work at the Forschungzentrum but not so much about fellow interns on the DAAD RISE programme. Deserving first mention is of course S, sharer of my bed and apartment, de facto logistics supervisor and map reader for our exotic weekend getaways-all in all an awesome summer companion. She’s two years younger which seems like a lot since my younger sister’s that age too, but definitely more organised than I am which makes for a nice complementary pairing as I am generally happy to be relieved of duties like checking up train times. For all her good sense, S is really a wide-eyed little fanboy at heart, with her excited fondness for Tintin and Marvel comics and LOTR and Star Wars. She is also big on Taekwondo and has made it a point for us to go hiking on a few of the weekends. Living with someone does really rub off on you-S’s own dietary habits, combined with the verbal and culinary persuasiveness of Duck and H respectively have culminated in a surprisingly high fibre intake on my part the last few weeks.
Among S's and my intermittent trip companions are a couple of other guys who also go to school in the States. To Luxembourg we were accompanied by D who has folks all over Germany from his paternal heritage. D is only eighteen but has already fulfilled the requirements for the first two years of college before entering. He’s a sweet and intelligent boy and I’m sure he’ll go a long way. Easy-going E came with us on our hikes to Eifel and the Sophienhöhe; he’s one of those people who has knack for turning just about anything into an interesting story. At the Scholars’ Meet at Heidelberg, we spent a charmed day trekking along the Philosopher’s Walk with M from Japan and B, who I found to my surprise had spent seven years in Singapore as his dad had been posted on ambassador duty from Thailand. It’s always nice to find someone with a connection to a place you’ve been away from for what seems like a long time and that you feel you’ve grown out of touch with. Last Friday, H, another Jülich intern, unexpectedly bunked at our place for two nights before his flight back to America. Although we hadn’t spoken that much before that, he turned out to be a really pleasant guy, and I wasted no time asking him questions about his homeland on that continent that remains so much of a mystery to me. H’s enthusiasm in sharing probably had something to do with the Ethiopian victories in Olympics long-distance running that same weekend.
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As you see, quite a bit has happened over the summer. Yet, for some reason-perhaps it’s my placid disposition, I don’t know-sometimes I look back and feel as if not much has happened at all. And just as straight lines that intersect in 2-D do not meet again, our finite existence in this temporal realm determines that there is a chance that every meeting and parting is final. Which is why I felt I had to write this. This, for me, is also a lesson in humility and the vastness of the world. In my puny life I flit along and meet people, and yet with each person I’ve had the fortune to know in some capacity, there others whom I might have been drawn to at once but never really got the chance to get to know better. So I know, from this tiny corner of experience, there are many many wonderful people out there, each living wholly unique lives, whom I will never ever know. I like to think that there is a connection between every single one of us.