(MSc) Sebinomics

Regina Castelberg put together the ten worst fashion trends in her article on tagesanzeiger.ch. I really needed to share this with you. It’s hilarious!

1. 1950s: Brassieres in the 1950s didn’t really highlight the natural shape of a woman’s body.

The 1950s Bra

2. 1960s: This kind of hair would have made Marge Simpson envious. 

Influencing Marge Simpson

3. 1968: Hippies and bell-bottoms rose and fell together. “How did people recognize that these pants’ bell bottom was too much bell-bottom? You had to think of an elephant when you saw those pants,” said Regina Castelberg, and I agree.
Picture: KEYSTONE/AP

The Boll-Bottoms

4. Sweatbands, as used by John Travolta, got very popular in the beginning of the 1980s and made cool guys like Travolta look like a girlish teenager. I think he looks cooler in Face/Off.

The Sweatband

5. 1980s: Neon-leggings, or leggings in general, as worn by Married With Children character Peggy Bundy, were/are considered to be a real turn off–not only Al Bundy found them tremendously ugly.

Neon-leggings

6. In the 1980s pop star Sandra Cretu wore jackets with big shoulder pads. Until today, no one really knows why even women felt the need to have shoulders like Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

Shoulder Pads

7. Seems as if we’re stuck in the 1980s. Remember our good ol’ Jelly Shoes? I loved them as a little kid, started hating them as a teenager!

The Jelly Shoes Cult

8. The 1990s saw the rise of the bib overalls as fashionable and trendy. I found them rather comfortable and cool. Nonetheless, I realized they didn’t make me as cool as I thought they would, when my bandmates made me take them off before a gig, because I looked stupid.

Bib Overall

9. The outfit of the rebellious teenager of the 1990s was the Grunge fashion, made popular by the late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. Somehow I felt that it looked very cool on him and his peers such as members of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains, but looked (and smelled) rather bad on teenagers not understanding the implications. 

The Grunge Fashion

10. The techno community saw their plateau sneakers as a trademark of their way of life and didn’t wear them only for their raves. The monstrous shoes found their way into daily life as an eye-catcher and to provide a few centimeters more to people who are not happy with their height.

Plateau Sneakers

Migros is the largest private employer in Switzerland. The company employs about 80,000 people. US-based Wal-Mart is the largest employer worldwide and has 2,100,000 employees on its payroll. If Wal-Mart would organize a dinner for all its employees, it would have to do it in a place, which equals the surface of all Migros stores—1 million square meters. 

I have been in the process of letting go trivial, material possessions for the past few months. For instance, I used to collect rare vinyl and Laserdiscs and spent about $15,000 for those discs since 1994. A few months back, I made important, life-changing decisions and decided to put myself on a material diet. I started by getting rid of all my vinyl and Laserdiscs within 7 days. It was painful because I received less than $700 for almost 1,000 discs. Nonetheless, I’m feeling better now.

I went through other things which were simply vegetating in my drawers, in my basement, or elsewhere, and am either selling them on eBay or giving them away for free to people who might need them. There are countless fiction books I will never read again which I’m giving to teachers or for charity, as well as many, many cloths. Also, toys that can make children smile will find their way into the right hands.

Getting rid of material possessions that take away space in my apartment is like washing off mud after a football match in the rain. It really feels good. My goal is to only own things in my apartment which I wouldn’t miss if I had to leave for a lonely island for a decade, where I can only bring one 20-kg-suitcase, one carry-on bag, and my Sukop 6-string bass. Tim Ferriss inspired me more than I imagined he would. Read his book The 4-Hour Workweek and you will know what I’m talking about.

Surfing the net I came across a very interesting little story:

“in life there are only two things to worry about: either you are well or you are sick. if you are well, then there is nothing to worry about: but if you are sick: there are two things for you to worry about: either you will get well or you will die. if you get well, then there is nothing to worry about. if you die: then there are two things to worry about: either you go up or down. if you go up, then there is nothing to worry about. but if you go down you will be so busy shaking hands with old friends you won’t have time to worry . . . “

If anyone knows who wrote this, please let me know.

Today, I realized once again, in a period of just a few weeks, what it means not being able to say goodbye to someone who has been close to you.

Just a few weeks back I met Samuel on the train to the university. Somehow I felt that Samuel was not very well off that day. I kept talking about just some trivial stuff when he suddenly stopped me and asked if I knew that Lea had died. Last time I have seen Lea was in 2000, shortly before I left for my studies in the USA, but I have been thinking of her ever since, because we have spent a few years together not knowing what exactly attracted us to each other. We never really got to be together as a couple, because of certain circumstances, but we were always friends. I have tried to get in touch with her again a couple of years ago, just to see how she was doing, but even by googling her name I was not able to find anything, and I was not sure if I should ask her parents to give me her contact. I thought, one day we will meet again. Well, I was wrong. I googled her name this past January, but again no luck and a couple of months later I have to bare the fact that I will never ever see her again on the face of this world—which makes me really sad.

And today, something similar happened again. I came home from school and there was a classy-looking letter lying on my desk. “And another of my friends is getting married”, was my first thought. Wrong. Richard Uetz died this past weekend. Richard was Andy’s dad. Andy was the drummer for Monsterbazz, the band that gave me a lot of musical and emotional satisfaction. Andy and I spent many days and nights with our friend Daniel (guitar player for Monsterbazz) playing music, partying, talking about girls and other problems that crossed our ways, and Richard was always there supporting us emotionally and financially. One day we realized that we needed to move on and decided to end our Monsterbazz-era. Richard was very mad at me, because he thought it was my fault and he was very disappointed in seeing a band with a lot of potential breaking up. We did not talk to each other anymore and he did not even show up at our last concert, which was a real success. I was sad, but I thought we would get over it and one day we would be able to meet up again, drink a class of wine together and become friends again. Wrong again Sebi. I did not even know that Richard was sick. I would have wanted to at least tell him thank you one last time for everything he did for us—for me. One can say it is my fault. Maybe it is. I could have had the guts and just called him up. But who thinks about death when life is so present?

I do not know if I will change and get in touch with people I think I have to talk to before they—or I—die. One thing is for sure though, I will try to tell the people close to me every day how I feel about them and that I appreciate everything they do for me, for themselves, and for everyone else. Life is too short to be caught up in stress and worries. Let us live life together and let us share every moment with a smile and a tear that will make us remember what we need to cherish and what we need take with us.

We finally started our preparatory trip through South India and believe me when I say “It is awesome!” Okay, our flight to Bangalore was kind of different from what I am used to. First, we flew from Zurich to Frankfurt in a good aircraft but the nice lady at the check-in counter was not able to give us the boarding passes for our connecting flight Frankfurt-Mumbai. No problem so far we thought. But because our flight had a slight delay in Zurich and then got into Frankfurt with more delay, we were among the last passengers to arrive at the gate and because our tickets were somehow not confirmed from Frankfurt to Mumbai, Sabrina, Michael and I had to sit apart from each other. Not that it was that big of a problem, but it would have been nice to sit together since we are traveling together. So far, so good.

When we boarded the plane I felt catapulted a few decades back in time. Not that I am that old, but the Air India aircraft we took, was among the oldest aircrafts I have ever flown with, if not “The” oldest. My seat already had ugly stains of “whatever-it-was”, and now it has some new ones because the flight attendant spilled some Coke over my nice new GAP pants. Fortunately the pants are of very good quality and it dried up very fast. She was nice and helped me out with some napkins and morally. What was missing was the multimedia system. At this point I have to ad that westerners are kind of spoiled and therefore, we always expect tons of movies and series and music and games to entertain us on flights longer than 6 hours. Well, with Air India you better bring a good book along or just watch a Bollywood movie they play on the screen, if you are able to see it.

In Mumbai, again, we had to hurry to the next plane to Bangalore. This one was actually very comfortable even though the installation was kind of loose in a few corners of the plane. But we were too tired to care about that. Since the plane was practically empty we had a lot of space for ourselves and it was less noisy than in the big and crowded plane we took before. Once arrived in Bangalore, we got our luggage right away and our taxi was already waiting for us. Finally we arrived at the hotel around 4 a.m. and now that I finished writing this blog entry my watch is telling me it is 5.28 a.m. and I should really hit the bed.

This quote is taken from Gurcharan Das’ book “India Unbound” and really makes the point in the Flat World.

This blog entry provides additional facts to the presentation “Ecology And Our Environment” held by Sabrina Meier, Joshua Hung, and myself, at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland on Monday, November 13, 2006. 

I am a frequent reader of TIME magazine and The Economist, and I like to watch documentaries about our environment on TV and in the theater. In the past few weeks, I happened to come across many different articles—more than ever—on the effects of global warming, greenhouse gases, India’s and China’s disastrous approach to environment, and I watched Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth“, a fascinating documentary on global warming. All the material I have seen and read made me realize that we are on a crusade to destruction, which needs to end soon. If we take a look at the following photograph, don’t you want to keep this wonderful star clean and safe?

Let us define ecology: Ecology is the study of the interactions between living things (including human beings) and the environment.

To prevent destroying our ecosystem, we have to work hand in hand and be aware of what we can damage. For instance, the ten hottest years ever recorded in history have occurred in the past fourteen years. 

Unfortunately, our politicians still don’t really know how to tackle this issue. Let’s see what one of our prominent leaders has to say about global warming: 

I don’t want to sound like a doom’s day promoter, but somehow this looks like a warning to me. And, if we take a look at natural catastrophes—not even mentioning insurance cases—the year 2005 was a scary year all over the world with catastrophes including Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans (August 2005), the Tsunami in South Asia (December 2004), storms and floods in Switzerland (August 2005), and Mumbai (July 2005), just to mention a few. Since Mumbai might not have gotten a lot of attention in Europe and the US, I would like to share a few data here:

“Mumbai, India – July 26, 2005″
37 inches of rain in 24 hours
Water levels reached 7 feet
The most an Indian city has ever received in one day
The death toll in Western India reached 1000

And, what is The Greenhouse Effect exactly? 

Taking a look at the following graphs, we can recognize a cyclical phenomenon where the amount of Carbon Dioxide, abbreviated as CO2, is increasing and decreasing with the temperature. What we need to consider is that the amount of CO2 has never been as high as today, and if we continue not to care, it will have disastrous consequences. 

One of the biggest problems caused by global warming is the melting of the poles. The extent of the sea-ice has dropped by 1.5 million square kilometers since 1970. This is a big problem for our environment because the sea-ice works like a gigantic mirror. More than 90% of the sunlight bounces off the sea-ice and the earth stays cooler. As the ice melts, the ocean absorbs more than 90% and that warms up the earth. If the oceans get warmer the coral riffs die and with them many species that depend on these riffs. All the ocean streams on our planet are connected with each other and they work like a conveyor: the so-called “ocean conveyor belt“. For example, if there is an anomaly somewhere in Greenland—because its ice melts away and cools off the water stream on its coast—the effect of the water temperature will be felt all the way to the coral riffs in Australia because of the ocean conveyor and will gradually kill live in those waters. And by the way, this is actually happening as I am writing this blog:

Speaking of the melting poles: For the first time in history scientists have found drowned polar bears. This is a very disturbing fact because polar bears are good swimmers and swim distances up to 100 km or more. When they get tired and look for a little place of ice to rest and they cannot find any ice, the polar bears just get going until they are tired and drown. Scientists are expecting the extinction of the polar bear species by the end of the century.

I don’t know about you, but I think polar bears have absolutely no guilt in what is happening to our environment and I see it as homicide if they die by our hand! 

Furthermore, the presentation discusses these TIME magazine articles:

-Visions of Green
-Running out of breath
-Awashing trash
-Saving Seoul
-Choking the growth
-Toxic shock
-China’s water woes

Please find these articles at TIME.com following this link, http://www.time.com/time/asia/2006/environment/index.html.

I don’t belong to any environmental organization such as WWF, Greenpeace or others, but I like our planet and I especially like animals. Dolphins, penguins, and polar bears are among the funniest and cutest animals, and if we don’t consider changing our habits or just think about the consequences of our actions, we might not be able to see the following pictures anymore: 

I hope this blog entry and the presentation—for whom as seen the presentation—were able to give you an insight into what is happening on our globe and what the issues are. 

(Source: http://www.newint.org/issue357/Images/together.gif)

Let us interact with our environment in a rather sustainable way—together!

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All information in this blog entry is taken from the following sources:
Al Gore “An Inconventient Truth”
Ecology [Encyclopedia] http://kosmoi.com/Life/Ecology
Polar Bears on thin Ice http://www.savebiogems.org/polar
Paleoclimate Ancient Temperatures http://www.worldviewofglobalwarming.org/pages/paleoclimate.htm