Speaking Denglish

Bruce Lee once said "If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done".

It's put so elegantly that I feel kind of bad for saying this but... Thank you, Captain Obvious. Now if you wanted to be really wise you could give me a way to stop thinking and start writing.

I know I promised an entry on the insurance industry and how German playgrounds and American cereal boxes actually say a lot about our national character, (well, maybe I wasn't so detailed in my promise, but that's what I wrote about anyway) but I seemed to have fallen into that infinite abyss called research, and any attempts to find a way out just seem to lead me even further in.

For example, In looking up statistics on law suits in the US,  I of course stumbled upon (read: collided at high speed) connections to the health care industry and cost of health care, which is quite the timely topic and something else that I have been researching with equal fervor on the side. The comparison of legal procedures in US and Germany also brought up the topic of differences in parenting, which connects to types of schools and "inherited education", which leads to a whole new myriad of topics.

Without a strict deadline or the rush of adrenaline there is nothing stopping me from reading anything and everything related to all connecting topics. And as it turns out, EVERYTHING is connected. In the process of information collecting  I haven't actually produced that for you all to read. New Years resolution: FAIL. Blog: Fail.

To continue with the motivational quote theme for today though, I'd like to think that "failure" is just life's way of helping you reorganize, reroute and nudge you this time in the right direction, but armed with a few more lessons. In my case lessons happen to be on socialized health care, school systems, and the impact that world war II had on shaping our world today.

So what I'm going to do now is something that I should have done a long time ago, and that is separate these relatively academic efforts from this blog entirely and create a new platform for such thoughts. One of my favorite classes at W&L I taught me about 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing... but it might as well have been called 22 Immutable Laws of Life.  The first (or maybe it was #17 or something) of these 22 laws is MEAN ONE THING.  The rest of the laws fall into place around it, like--be the first to mean that one thing, and if you can't be the first, then be first in the mind, and if you can't be first in the mind then mean something else... ).

From hence forth this blog-- A Strange Cup of Tea--is to mean this one thing: it will be an outlet for sharing the wonderful experiences I have had over here. Whether they are cultural or simply worth sharing, this blog will be fluffy, picture filled, and I don't have to feel guilty about it because my new blog  will be where I place my academic and (gasp) political thoughts.

My new blog will mean just that: a general place of sharing knowledge and thoughts of the day. It will be more like a twitter account for things I learn while researching the big topics. Though everything I write may not be a complete thought, I would like to gather all of the notes and incomplete thoughts at the end and put them all together a book, er, well, kind of like a mini thesis with chapters? Or a glorified blog? I don't know what the academic/real world will call it, but I'm going to call it Speaking Denglish, and I look forward to sharing it with you in the process, and hopefully the finished product when I come back to the US.

Ok, for now though, I have to tend to an utter catstrophe at Glücksburger Straße 52; namely, the broken shower. Lest I actually turn into a smelly german (that was mean... oops) I should probably get on this soon.

Will post a fun picture filled update by the end of the day!