Cheryl on the Web

It wasn’t until I moved out of the US that I began slowly to realize the general lack of awareness within America of the challenges developers (should) face and address when building multi-cultural websites or applications. Microsoft writes books on the topic but seemingly few people read them. I sometimes get the impression that, in particular for websites or applications published only in English, American developers tend to think, it’s all the same language, how hard can it be for someone in Europe to use this? “Obvious” differences between cultures like date/time formatting, number formatting, and printer paper size are usually ignored - sometimes because the developers aren’t even aware a difference exists or, even worse, because they consider the difference immaterial.

My grievance today is related to a “cultural oversight” bug in the immensely popular, open-source blogging tool I use, WordPress. (more…)

If you read my post about alarm clocks around 2 weeks ago, you may remember how happy I was to have finally found a great new alarm clock from Grundig, after arduous searching. So, you can imagine my disappointment when, shortly thereafter, I discovered that the very first “1” on the alarm clock displayed more like a “d” than a 1. At the Media Markt, the store where I bought the clock, I returned it for a new one .. so you can probably understand my growing frustration when the replacement had an alarm that incremented one minute every second. Set the alarm for 07:00, wait 60 seconds, and then check it, only to discover the alarm is now set for 08:00! Even cooler: hold down the alarm button to view the alarm time, and watch the alarm magically increment itself.
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I could Google it and find out what in the world that is. But I’m actually enjoying the mystery a little. I can tell you it’s the reason I get work off on Thursday, when seemingly everyone else still has to work.

For those of you who don’t know, Germany has a very fair way to decide what days are holidays. The majority of each province effectively “wins”, and whatever holidays are associated with their religious beliefs are the official ones. So here in the southern-most province of Germany, Bayern, the majority is Catholic. That means that people working in Bayern get holidays that aren’t celebrated in the neighboring province, Hessen (think Frankfurt) - since Hessen is majority Protestant. This is a useful way to maintain separation of church and state; by treating religion as part of culture, the big religious holidays can be days off work without making the things they stand for part of what the government stands for.

Of course, if you work in Bayern and your partner works in Hessen, there will be a few days in the year your holidays don’t match. But who cares? Just means you’ll get the house, the TV, and the sun or snow to yourself for those extra hours :)

Tonight after dinner, as Tim and I were clearing off the table, Tim turned to me with an empty plastic container and said, “Where shall I put this, O Almighty Ruler of Recycling?” And he was serious. I often manage to catch him breaking one of the all-important recycling decrees in Germany, so he should be serious! :) (more…)

Yesterday after work, Tim and I drove up to Frankfurt with some friends to go to a concert of the L.A. Guns. Somehow during a ballad middle in the concert we got dragged onto stage with some other folks to sit campfire-style around the band. (No, this is not something I usually would do, but Tim was the first one to be dragged up onto the stage, so when I got pulled up I didn’t protest.) At one point, the singer asked me - in front of all the entire audience - “Do you speak German?” I hesitated, decided he meant fluent German, and said, “No”. He said, okay, what do you speak? I hesitated, decided that to answer “English” was trite and very non-specific, and answered with a smile, “American”. He laughed and said, “Where are you from?” I hesitated, hesitated again, and finally said, “It’s a long story.” (more…)

Tim and I have discovered a new kind of Trivial Pursuit here in Germany. It’s actually not officially produced under the name Trivial Pursuit - we bought it for 10 euro at the post office and it’s called “MaxTax Steuersparen 2007″. You got it: taxes in German.
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I never thought that the day my parents would come to visit me in my first house would be such a big deal. Of course, I never realised that the house would be in Germany, or that it would be the first time my parents actually saw how Tim and I live. The last time they came to visit our apartment in Leiden (Holland), they didn’t really get a good idea of our lifestyle since everything was in boxes! … when they originally booked that visit I hadn’t the faintest idea we would be moving that week.. to Germany.. This time they’re playing it safe; they booked the flight at the last minute, so there’s not a very big chance that we would be out of this house before they arrive! Particularly since we bought this one ;) (more…)