the number of the beast

My birthday is in November and people who are born in that month have two very clear, but different, destinies. They either rule at school because the are the eldest or they are the youngest (and the smallest and the weakest).

I belong to the second group...

I was in junior high from the age of 11 to 14 (instead of 12 to 15 years). I had masculinity problems back then. I was not only small and thin, but my body also developed slower than the rest of my colleagues. Imagine: My biggest dream when I was 14 was to have beard, mustache and hair on my armpits (axila in Spanish and Achsel in German). I have very clear memories of me dreaming of a magic lotion which could accelerate the hair growth. I think it is similar to what soon-to-be-bald-men experience when they start noticing their destiny.

Do you know the Italian football player del piero? I don’t like football, but I know that in the early 90's he was the one to be blamed for institutionalising a beard fashion. Maybe you remember men shaving their beard almost completely, but they left a thin line on the cheeks, around the mouth and finally joining a thin mustache-line. You may remember the name of this beard, it was the “del piero-style beard” also known as the “stupid beard”.

On Saturday, I was in the pharmacy and behind me at the cashier, there was a guy wearing the stupid beard. But the funny stuff was, the product he was buying.

Do you want to picture him? Austrian guy, late 30's, black hair, artificially tanned (fanta skin syndrome), body-builder-type and not so tall. He was buying a deodorant in spray.

The deodorant was called “beast”

Yes...the deodorant was called “beast”

The can had a number written on it “8x4”. I had to force myself to stop looking. But could not get this mathematic calculation out of my mind. It was obvious the result was 32...but 32 what?

I had to google “beast deo” and learned more about the product. Apparently “Beast” has lots of musk and other stuff in order to attract women.

After reading this, my question was still not answered: 32 what? Does the deodorant smells like 32 male elephants ready to mate? Does it smell like a donkey that hasn't taken a shower in 32 hours?


I am happy I don't need to spray the scent of 32 wild beasts over my body everyday in the morning...and I am happy that my masculinity issues were solved last year.

This is the moment when I come to a conclusion or simply re-write the blog's title

Some weeks ago, Kathrin wrote me an e-mail saying that in my last blog entries, she could felt I am worried because of my age and asked me to stay cool.

...Am I getting old too fast? 
...Have I failed in reaching socially-well seen goals like owning something big, like a house or a car? 
...Have I missed trends because I am over 30?

I think I am really caught in the middle. I am experiencing weird feelings. I know I am seen as an old-guy for the people in their 20s and people in their 30s see me as unmature (lately, Carol told me she saw the move "Submarine" and told me the main character was just like me. I streamed the movie just to realize that the move is about a sad teenager - but it was still a very nice movie).

Today I cried in the office because my friend Orlaith and her daughter are moving to Vienna this week. It was very hard to accept that I won't be seeing Inés Helena very often. Inés, if you can read now and manage to see my blog: “I miss you!”

...Was this my biological clock ticking like the beats of a bad eurotechno song?
...Is my estrogen telling me I should have a baby?
...maybe this explains the two problems I have on my chest.

Last Friday my mom called me and asked me if my mobile had “what's app”. I replied I had no idea what that was. She answered me “it is a little programme I have in my mobile and in my iPad and it would allow us all (she meant her, my sister, my brother and myself) to communicate very easy”. She also told me that the biggest present I could give her in christmas was to buy smart phone.

This is the end of the entry and the moment when I come to a conclusion or simply re-write the blog's title: I may not be prepared to have a child, but I am prepared for "what's app": Technology, here I come!

Eka, I am sorry...

This summer, when I was living in Georgia I went once to a swimming pool with Maka and Eka. They are twin sisters and they are two of the seven people I met in Tbilisi. Yes, i am not very social when I am abroad.

Maka and Eka are very sporty. They have been swimming for ages, they even knew the staff from the sport club by name.

After swimming for over 5 minutes that day, I had to take a break and went to the club's veranda and placed my pale body on a laying chair under the shadow. As usual, when I am on my bath trunks, I was a little bit ashamed of my body – mainly because all the people round had work-out bodies. And there were a lot of them; but I think this is usual in sport clubs.

When complaining about my couch-potato silhouette, Eka told me that I had potential to look better. She told me that if I worked out for some weeks, instead of a funny belly, I could be the proud owner of a six-pack. I was so motivated, that I promised her and myself to work out to transform my jelly-bean-belly into an iron monster. Deadline: November 14th, 2012. That way the date of my 34th birthday...

I do pilates every Tuesday and last week I was highly motivated to accomplish my goal. I worked out hard that day and truly hoped to reach my dream: Celebrating my birthday with a titanium abdomen. I really felt like I could make it.

I am 34 years old and two days. I just had two huge plates of magnificent gnocchi, I am drinking my 5th glass of wine and I have been sitting in front of th ecomputer for the last two hours. Eka, I am sorry...



P.S. I thought of adding a pic of my tummy, but after five seconds of reflection, I decided not to provoke you unwanted nightmares

The return of The Manster OR the pfirsich-melba situation

If you live in Innsbruck you surely know the „Pfirsich-Melba“ yoghurt from Tirol Milch. If not, let me tell you it is the only sweet yoghurt I like. As a child I always said I did not like yoghurt and I still remember the last time I tried it. It was a strawberry one from danone which I completely disliked. We were living with our grandparents back then, so I was maybe 8 years old or.

Last year in summer I tried the Pfirsich-Melba (Peach and Raspberry) and I was very sceptical about it, but she told me that this yoghurt was special; and indeed it is. This one lacks the sour taste of milk (I also don't like butter milk).

Some weeks ago, I was on my desk having a Pfirsich-Melba just before lunch and my mouth started to produce lots of saliva. I really felt like drinking pure lemon juice (when we Mexicans see lemon juice our mouth start to water), but it was quite strange: Salivating so by having yoghurt in my mouth. I thought to myself “This yoghurt is very good, but come on! Why am I salivating so much?”

My working colleagues came for lunch some minutes after that and while eating, I started to feel strange, my left cheek started to feel warm and I kept on salivating. Then, I got my little mirror from the desk drawer (I know it is very gay to keep a small mirror in your drawer...) and I did not see Oscar reflected I saw the Manster...

Are you know wondering what a manster is? Are you wondering how a manster looks like?

...The manster is a creature which is half man, half hamster. People turn into mansters when they have a salivary gland problem becasue of eating Pfirsich-melba when there is full-moon.

Here is the proof that on October the 10th 2012, I, Oscar Germes, a normal guy from Mexico...turned in to a Manster!!!

My 100th entry - OR - The coolness and the aftershave

I started to write my blog almost three years ago. When I started, I thought writing was only a way to deal with the sorrow and loneliness of my stay in Nicaragua. I never thought I could be ever writing my blog entry number 100...yes, this is entry number 100!

Here are some statistics:

• My blog has been visited 9,353 times. Out of those, at least 1,500 was me unsuccessfully looking for comments,
• There have been only 24 Comments in the entire blog's history (that includes my answers to the comments)
• The most read entries were:
  1. A fish soup, a Latin-music gig and the trip planned for tomorrow (547 times), maybe because people googled “Latin Music”
  2. My first blog entry (175 times)
  3. The final countdown (159 times). People were surely looking for the lyrics of the 80's song 
  4. When you think a situation cannot get any worse...it gets (121 times)

The least read entries was “The dance floor” (6 times) and I visited the page at least 4 times...

Right now, I can think of some highlight among the happy entries

• When you think a situation cannot get any worst...it gets 
• When two independent things, leading to the same object, occur at the sametime we have to pay extreme attention! 
• Iwish my name would have been Oscar Lowenstein

And an emotional one about friendship: a smiley in the title :-) OR Männer im Wasser  

Thank you for reading my sad, my funny, my nostalgic, my familiar, my prosecco, my friendship, my culinary entries...and the other ones.  Here is my entry number 100: 

The coolness and the aftershave 

My high school prom night was in early summer 1996. I drank Gin & Tonic that night. During that period, most of my friends drank whiskey on the rocks. Now, 17 years later, I sincerely don't understand why we did this.

I don't know at what point children (because we were children, we were 17) like to imitate their fathers. I think, we thought it was cool to do things older people did, maybe we felt we were cool because we were ahead of our time...

Years later, when I was around 20, I suddenly felt that people over 30 were uncool. I did anything to avoid looking like them. I stopped drinking Gin and I grew my hair long (very uncool now and also very uncool back then, but I thought it was cool). I thought drinking canned beer and cheap red wine and having long hair was very cool. This was for me an anti-30-year-old-attitude.

I am about to turn 34 and it was two years ago that my German flatmate told me she couldn’t understand why I still had no wife and no kids.

And now, after 17 years, I am slowly doing things that older people do:

• I love Gin & Tonic...again,
• I have a moustache (which makes me look disgusting and cool at the same time),
• and the coolest thing of all: I used Old Spice after shaving last week.

Do you know Old Spice? I know it from the time we were living with our father - that was before 1986 – and since then, I haven't lived in a household with a bottle of Old Spice.

Last weekend, I was visiting my cousin Larisa and I shaved while I was there. When I asked for some aftershave to cool down the irritated skin, she handed me more than an aftershave, it was a bottle full of memories. Since I was 4 or five years old, Old Spice stands for recently shaved men over 50. It was great using it...it smelled great (not “great” in the pure sense of great, but “great” in the pure sense of “cool-retro” great). 

I do not know if using Old Spice last week felt wonderful because for me, it is cool to do stuff older people do, or because maybe once, when I was younger, I had the desire of imitating my father...

My new smooth-ageing strategy

For me, Sundays are nice days until 16:59, right after that, they are slowly surrounded by a strange nostalgic feeling which reminds us that it is almost over: We will be in the office soon and five long days will have to pass until we can celebrate the next weekend.

Today, it is Sunday, and it has been a sad day from the very beginning. What I usually do when I am depressed is to write a blog.

On Friday I went to the doctor to finally have a health check up! The results were not bad:

• Blood pressure: OK
• Lungs: OK
• Kidneys: OK
• Eyes: OK
• Liver: ...surprisingly OK!
• Cholesterol: 309, should be 300
• Body mass index: half a kilo away from overweight

On my way from the doctor's practice to my office, I brainstormed to create a strategy in order to make my ageing smoother. I already use anti-ageing body lotion, but this is not enough. I think I have to do more pilates and consume less cheese and milk-chocolate (the main reason for my slightly high cholesterol). This plan has only three points, so it is sureyly not hard to accomplish.

I was thinking about this new smooth-ageing strategy on my bike, when the wind on my face was moving a moustache-hair and this little guy was scratching my nose. The feeling was very annoying! Then, I remember that the last two nights I woke up suddenly thinking that a spider was walking around my nose. Back then, I desperately scratched and rubbed my nose until the feeling was gone. I really thought it was a spider, but on the bike I knew it was my moustache.

Later in the office, I wanted to put an end to this annoying feeling. So I took my scissors and a pocket mirror and then I saw them...

...there was indeed a rebel moustache-hair growing in the wrong direction (towards my nostrils), but, there was a second hair. It was the longest nose hair I ever saw on someone younger than 80. I cut it immediately and added on e more thing to my smooth-ageing strategy:

1. Continue using anti-ageing body lotion
2. Do more sport
3. Eat less dairy products and chocolate
4. Buy a nose-hair trimmer

Mein Halbes Leben OR "my life's to do list"

About three years ago, my good friend Maria recommended me to watch an Austrian documentary called „Mein halbes Leben“ something I, as a non-native speaker in neither English nor German, would translate as „Half of my life“. The film is about a guy in his mid-30's suffering of a late quarter life crisis...or an early mid-life crisis.

When I was in Georgia, I started to feel like the guy in the movie...

Sometimes, I have the feeling my life goes so slow, that I don't have to hurry, and that gives me the security to take things easy. But that cosy secure feeling disappears each time I take a look at my life. it is horrible, years have passed and I have done little.

Just imagine, on my last medical check-up, I was diagnosed with lightly high cholesterol. Maria, who is also a very good dietitian, told me my HDL (the good cholesterol) was high, but there was not much to worry about, however, on that day I promised to myself to have a medical check once a year...that was four years ago, and it was also the last time I went to the doctor.

Being depressed for being passive with life - and in combination of having a hangover on Saturday - gave me the strength and courage to erase things from my life's to do list. In the past 72 hours, I have been achieving incredible things:

- Appointment with the dentist: Checked! (wanting to do so since May)
- Built the kitsch-frame with deer-horns I wanted so much: Checked! (wanting to do so since 2011)
- Three loads of laundry: Checked! (wanting to do so since 2 weeks)
- Opening a savings account: Checked! (already happened in December, but was pending since 2005)
- Doing pilates at home: Checked! (wanting to do so since 3 weeks)
- Call Electrolux and ask why the refrigerator drops water: Checked! (wanting to do so since summer 2009)

Maybe those things listed above don't see like much to you, but doing that last weekend was a giant step.

I should not claim victory, there are still things do: 

- Make the appointment for the medical check (4 years delay), 

- Call the carpenter and ask him once more about my bed (5 months delay), 

- Hang the mirror lying on my bedroom (10 months delay), 

- Finish my Ph.D. (10 months delay)...

- If I continue, I will start crying...