On Friday, a man was killed and at least eight other people were injured when a combat drone hit a residential building in the centre of Tel Aviv. According to the army, the long-range drone came from Yemen. The Houthi terrorist group spoke of an attack on an ‘important target’ in Tel Aviv. The distance between the both countries is 2000 km. Obviously, hate knows no distance. And Iranian allies are well equipped.
I worked a lot the last days – always extra productive when the weather is so nice as it was for a couple of days this week. I wrote a new video script and checked two new videos after the producers did their job. I finished a big project last Sunday and will send it out this week. I decided some layout questions for a new book and organized some stuff for an online learning platform. We are making real progress on that front, which is great.
Also, I learned that Germany is not too bad in digital stuff as it was! It was possible to renew my library card (on request) and I didn't have to turn up at the library. Totally new experience! Also, since I did so much research the last week, I stumbled across the following realization: It is so easy to write academic texts theses days!
No comparison to when I was writing my doctoral thesis. No comparison! When I think about how often I drove to the library for nothing, wasting petrol and time, just because my ordered book wasn't there after all. How many hours I stood at the photocopier and copied pages and pages of text, how much money and time that cost! The person at the copy shop knew me by name and always reserved the fastest copier in the back corner for me. The one that copied without me having to close the lid. After an hour at that thing, I was blind, but much faster than if I had to close the copier for every page. I probably sponsored a new photocopier for the copy shop, that's how much money I left there.
And then the lugging of books - there and back, considering opening hours, hoping that the “book box” into which you could then throw the return at some point, wasn't closed due to overcrowding.
And then waiting for orders from other libraries… weeks.
I needed some translations from French texts, again… waiting. Today I just copy a passage and ask the translation programs online to understand what it is about.
I did interviews with colleagues from Israel and the US. Again, waiting for replies, that they were sending back the questionnaires. And sometimes I had an additional question – again waiting for replies. It was just unbelievable. Today I would simply ask for a virtual meeting.
As I said yesterday to a friend: Good old days! May they never come back 😊. At least in this regard.
What incredible progress we have made! When I started studying, some years before I wrote my thesis, there were still card indexes (Paper! In boxes!) in the libraries with all the books and their locations. The switch to digital cataloguing had only just begun. So, I needed to learn both systems.
Oh boy, I feel as if I was there when the wheel was invented😊! This progress is just amazing.
I really believe, if someone needs more than 6 months for a doctoral thesis these days, this someone is just lazy. The old excuses about not getting a book no longer work. You can get almost anything online these days. Ok, enough for now.
I got several replies on my blog post last week – thanks for reading and thanks for your support. These are difficult and exhausting times. I very much appreciate that you took some moments to read my thoughts and opinions. I know we are all a bit tired. It takes way too long. And then there are 6 weeks of summer vacation and actually 1,5 days (!) of summer weather in Northern Germany. I know we want to rest a bit, forget about for a moment and just enjoy life. Please do so! Rest, and recharge.