Kiss Me? No: Germany Bans Kissing

Germany has been questioning it's workplace decorum this week after The Knigge Society (why does everything official and German have to sound so comic?) called for a ban on kisses on the cheek in places of work as it can make greeting colleagues and business partners uncomfortable for many.

The society's Chairman, Hans-Michael Klein said he received many worried emails from workers who were uncomfortable with the practice and liken it to form a form of 'terroism'.

He said the practice was something that came in from France, where two kisses are common and Italy, where in some parts three is the norm and it "is not typical German behaviour".

Although I do have to say that the terrorism allegory is a tad extreme I do find my self agreeing with any legislation that may prevent people I don't know touching me even if its an over step into personal liberties.

It's not just kissing, I don't like it when people hug me when they don't know me, when they pat my arm, even when they sit next to me on the train. I don't like an aura of physically proximity to other people.

This may surprise some people as I'm normally quite a tactile person once you get to know me. I will always hug and kiss people I actually like and it means absolutely nothing in particular other than general affection.

But because I associate physical contact with friendliness and affection I don't want strangers anywhere near me.

They are not my friends, they do not know me, I don't know where they've been. So they can't spread their germs all over me.

I'm quite in favour of a 'social distance zone'.

Buses

I hate buses.

I really do. I've been doing work experience for the past two weeks and have had to get the bus for the first time really since I left Harrogate.

I've been nearly hit by them in Birmingham more times than I can count though admittedly this is partly my fault (and the fact that the temporary traffic lights on Bristol Road never seem to work) and have got lost in Edinburgh more than once over the past week or so simply because I don't know which bus stop to getting off at.

My woeful lacking in the navigation department has been well documented and I have always relied on trains (or the Tube when I'm in London) because of it. Despite the fact they're never there on time at least its simply, you get off when you see the sign for the station, there aren't five hundred stops with the identifying markers around them being a non descript electronics shop.

I just can't do it. Some people look at maps and see a logic grid depicting the world around them; a see a confusing haze of wavy lines varying in size and meaning absolutely nothing. I can picture streets in my head but I mark them with certain shops and they stand out isolated in my mind; I can't connect the dots.

And its because of this I hate buses, I find travel stressful at the best of times but trying to find the correct point to jump off a moving vehicle makes it all the worse.

I've mastered the 73 from outside Angel tube station in Islington and the 36 to Leeds from outside my doctor's in Harrogate, anything other than makes me feel stressed and slightly ill.

My fear of buses may also come from the fact that I nearly lost my teddy bear on a London bus when I was about two or three. It was pretty scaring.

Revision

I hate the library.

I hate the people who just have to be crammed in next to me and just have to brush past me every time they have to get up (which seems to be every five minutes)and their friends that insist on leaning over me to talk to them for ages.

But most of all I hate revision. No matter how hard you try its never done, you never feel like you know enough, you feel like want you're learning will probably irrelavent.

What is worse though is that if you actually want to get any work done away from the distractions of Facebook and Glee you have to go to the library and you have to get there early. Ridiculously early.

I was not built for trekking to the library with the birds. I just spent 4 and a half hours there and I've had to come home to eat and rest because I was actually starting to feel physically nauseaous and could no longer see straight.

I call this library fever.

And now I'm going back for another couple hours of revision.

Its times like these when I kind of of wish I smoked because I would have a legitimate excuse to escape from the shackles of my chair legs every once in and while. I feel stupid just aimblessly wandering around the library and I can't keep going to Spar.

I can't wait till next Tuesday afternoon is over and I can have my life back.

Oh but wait, I still have an internship to do and I'm supposed to start working on my dissertation because I won't have much time this summer because of work experience.

No rest for the wicked.

Question Time

I really shouldn't watch Question Time anymore. It only makes me angry.

Watching it this week just enraged me, hearing the talk about Osama Bin Laden and watching how the usual reactionary drivel bandied about is met with the approval of the clapping seals in the audience.

One of the commentators and several of the audience members seemed to think that it was ok to contravene international law because Bin Laden is evil and they seemed to have the mistaken assumption that the West automatically takes up camp on the moral high ground.

There were voices of reason in the audience and on the panel but I just felt so frustrated that they could say all this stuff and I was stuck behind the computer screen unable to contribute my own opinion to the debate and could only vent on Facebook.

I have never been able to keep my mouth shut.

Maybe this is why I want to be a journalist because I feel so frustrated when people don't listen to me or I can't get my voice heard.

This could also be a sign that I am completely insane but whatever.

Aspirations

I had a bit of a Sex and the City marathon the other night accompanied with ice cream and various female musical icons such as Madonna, Aretha and Gaga (they really need no last name).

So I had a rather girly evening.

However it got me thinking about the lives they lead and how ridiculously overprivelged they really are. For instance, there is no way that Carrie could afford an apartment like that and a designer shoe collection on a journalistic salary.

And yet we are supposed to buy into the lifestyle where all of them have successful careers but only ever seem to sit around a table talking about sex rather than actually doing any work. Carrie always seems to only write one sentence of every article then turns off her laptop (without saving), staring off into the middle distance and still is somehow rehired by her newspaper. And are we seriously supposed to believe that Samantha hasn't had some form of STI?

It does look nice to live in New York City with no financial concerns whatsoever whilst you do a job you actually like but the whole thing seems rather like hollow consumer porn.

I've never been a major Sex and the City fan because it always seemed like there was nothing really beneath the surface. It was almost a tad boring watching rich people run around New York City, I wasn't incensed by the rejection of the little man; I was just ambivalent.


The endless product placement starts to drag. I know its a key part of the Sex and the City brand but I do think people get sick of the vapid conspicious consumption. Take the lastest Sex and the City movie, Abu Dhabi seems nice and glamourous (the hotel looked lovely) but if you stop and think, what makes it better than anywhere else? Its sunny, but so is southern Spain and thats only a short Ryanair flight away. The hotel room is so luxurious; as long as its clean and there is working plumbing does it really matter?

I just don't understand why projecting the materiaslistic dream onto our television sets is supposed to entertain us; the real thing certainly doesn't make us happy. Even seeing rich people miserable doesn't seem that interesting.

I think that SATC became a sensation because women enjoying sex was controversial. Had it been debuted today it probably would have sank without a trace.

Massive Wuss

I'm ill.

Like my whole head suddenly seizing up in pain everytime I move my neck or inhale ill, throbbing pulsating headache that occasionally cloudes my vision a little bit ill, like producing far too much mucus than is ladylike to describe ill.

Bet you love that last image.

Now that the fever and headache has abatted a little (the combination of pain killers and the antibodies in my immune system finally getting off their arses and doing something after a week of this) I can use a computer and find that I have ridiculous amounts of work to do.

No wonder my body is so rundown.

Of course, this is only a cold, if it was the flu I wouldn't be able to get out of bed but the problem with a cold is no matter how rotten you feel you still can't justify staying in bed all day even though you should probably.

Its that weird state between manflu and actual flu when you're too ill to function probably but still have to anyway.

I really think I need a holiday, on a beach with a bar serving cheap cocktails adjacent preferably.

Can anyone sort this out for me for all the money in my bank balance which is now ooooooh -£200 or so.

Ok, good, thanks.

'Life is Savage or it is not Life at all'

How pretentious. Using a quote as a title and a quote from a period drama at that.

Yet, I suppose it describes the epiphany on the way home from Tesco I had last night.

Of course I had said revelation whilst doing something so mundane but isn't that always the way? Life is not like the movies where something so cataclysmic or profound sends the hero/heroine in a dramatic/romantic tailspin that makes them rush off to the airport/train station/their boss' office (normally to some sort of swirling score urging them on) to announce exactly how they are going to change their lives.

In the real world, you make discoveries about what you want, who you are and what you need when your mind wanders doing the mundane tasks like standing in a queue for a couple hundred years or dragging your shopping home. And the discovery is normally small; we are not like Dorothy in Oz, things don't pop into Technicolor, they slowly turn to colour.

So what did I realise? Did I work out what I want to do with my life? Did I work out my screwed up personal life and decide to stop wasting my time on people do nothing but harm to it? Or did I at least work out my finances?

Nope, I decided to simply embrace being a drama queen.

From this blog you may have noticed my tendency to be slightly 'highly strung' and 'strong willed' (those are the nicest ways of putting it). I've spent the past 4 months or so lamenting this essential part of my character and the ridiculous situations I get myself into because of it.

However, in the past three weeks, as I've been trying to sort my life out I've never been more bored. Now some may say I seek attention (and to a certain extent they may be right) but I've realised I don't want my life to become sensible, sober and along the straight and narrow.

The drama in my life sucks; it makes me what to tear my hair out, scream, cry, laugh, all at the same time but I wouldn't change it for the world.

It keeps life interesting and at the end I can say life was a bitch but at least I lived it properly.

I don't know what I want and I don't know how my life is going to pan out. Its terrifying, for about a year now I've wanted a plan and or a direction because project less ambition is so confusing and frustrating. But if I knew I’d just get bored with the linear path laid out in front of me. By not knowing, my life stops being routine and repetitive for as long as possible. With my highly strung way of viewing the world, I never really know what’s going to happen next and this is good as well as bad.

I suppose I’m learning to take all the crap because occasionally it comes with a bit of good.

It's like in Pocahontas (I know standard blog procedure is to quote some profound, wise and dead scholar/poet but its my personal blog and I’ll reference Disney movies if I like) when she is singing and rowing along the river about having to get married and she comes to the fork. She goes down the narrower, more dangerous river bed because its more exciting and she doesn’t know where it goes.

Life is dramatic, hard and full of ridiculous situations but hopefully it should be entertaining as well.

You heard it here first folks; 'Mad' Caroline is back and better than ever. Expect more OTT hijinks and hysteria to follow.