Day 3 Germany

Today I learned that Augsberg is famous for having the largest prostitution per resident ratio in Germany. :)

 John had work today so this was my chance to borrow a bicycle and explore the city on my own. In an expected turn of events, breakfast had been prepared for us - it was a traditional German breakfast including; bratwurst, pretzel and heffeweizen. Absolutely delicious. I'm sure having alcohol super early in the morning 2 days in a row didn't help my lingering jetlag.

There wasn't much to do in the town, but I proceeded to do the lost tourist march to find all the major attractions anyway. There were a few cool statues and some overpriced museums. In the midst of it all I got to meet with a homeless man who is informally known as the "King of Augsburg". I took a shameless selfie with him and was on my way. On the way back I stopped by the University to check out their facilities. My lasting impression is "meh, is aiight I guess".

By late afternoon I retreated back to Johns mums home to cocoon myself in the comforts fast WiFi and free food. Once recovered I went for a 2 to 3 hour hike around the giant park next to the house. It was fantastich!

In the evening John and I went to a brewery to try a lot of local beers. It was a good end to a good trip :)

Next stop, Munich!

Day 2 Germany

We woke up at the crack of 7am to go on a long hike. I had breakfast with the family, including Johns grandmother and uncle. At some point I joked that I planned on using "schnapps" to hydrate myself during the hike instead of water now that I'm in Bavaria. Sadly, the grandmother, who knows literally no English (that's right, none) latched onto the word "schnapps" and assumed I wanted some with breakfast. In the most aggressive act of hospitality she poured me a full shot of 60% APV schnapps that was in the cupboard next to me. I gestured that John wanted some too, and we began what would become a great day of tipsy hiking.

We drove 2 hours south to a hiking track called Höllen Thalklamm (Hell Valley). It's a trail that goes up and around the mountains that separate Germany from Austria - Trump would be proud. We packed 6 beers for the trip and 1 bottle of water - we could refill the water bottle at anytime from the stream that we were hiking along. There was a restaurant at the top where I enjoyed SpecKnödel (kinda like a bacon dumpling) & sour kraut. The meal was perfect and it reinforced my strongly held view that Germany has the best food in Europe.

We arrived back home instantly using a teleporter (the Germans call it the "autobahn"). We reached a max speed of 180 km/hr... how fucking crazy is that!? A wonderful traditional meal had been prepared for us, and an additional guest called Roxanna (a relative of Johns from Romania) had joined us for dinner. Everyone's proficiency level in English was very different; the grandmother at the bottom and Roxanna at the top, so we had to take turns switching between English and German, with poor John acting as a UN translator the whole time.

I wanted to end the night with a bang by going to a pub to drink a few more steins, but God decided to become my own personal bouncer and made it piss down with rain. Instead we watched War Dogs and went to bed. Great day all up.

Day 1 Germany

This small collection of posts will be about my trip around Germany before I begin my new life in the Netherlands.

But first, some housekeeping: I've spent the last 7 months in Sydney working at Smart Sparrow. Before flying to Europe Kaz and I visited my parents in KL. After almost a week, Kaz and I split ways and I headed to London for Laura's wedding. On the 7th, free from family commitments, I made my way to Luton Airport to fly to Munich.

Once I arrived in Munich, Johannes (who I call John because I'm a dumb English speaker) picked me up and drove us both to Augsburg. We got lost a few times but made it there in the end. I put far too much pressure on John to go to a pub before we arrived at his parents place. He reluctantly accepted and we both powered down a well anticipated and unearned stein and Hefeweizen. No food in either of our stomach's got us both a tad tipsy, so I figured the only way to sober up was to accept Johns offer to drive his manual car all the way home. Spoiler: We didn't die, but I did stall the car in the wrong lane a few times. I guess its fortunate for me it was only a 2 minute drive in a safe and empty neighborhood.

When we arrived we found out Johns mum had stayed up till midnight just to greet me. John said its because an Australian arriving is "big news"; I think it's because she wanted to make sure she wasn't housing a psychopath. Either way, she was very hospitable and lovely.

Science and Moral progression

I'm baaaaack.

The rise in AI has interested me quite a lot lately. Imagine a driver-less car that's destined to hit either 1 pedestrian or 3. How would the AI process what to do in a situation like that? These are moral questions that will eventually need to be coded into the AI.

Sadly though, technological progress is skyrocketing, while moral philosophy is still pottering around at an elementary philosophical level. My experience from studying moral philosophy at University taught me that there is no unanimously agreed upon definition of morality, yet alone an objectively progressing moral science. I suspect religion is the main culprit for this.

Regardless, this chasm between science and moral philosophy is going to be a huge problem for the future. I suspect whole new fields of moral engineering will pop up, sidestepping regressive philosophical relativists. If it doesn't, however, I suspect technology will become increasingly unbounded and will be incorrectly viewed as the cause for a lot of damage & and destruction.

Freedom fighter in the future

I've decided i'm gong to create really quick and silly cartoons mocking George Orwell's view about technology. I actually really liked the book, but I don't like the hysteria about technology and AI that's become quite mainstream since.

Future

Working in the Engineering industry has taught me a lot. One of the things it taught me was that large companies have too much inertia to adjust to changes in working culture. I think this is because a) retraining a lot of staff is hard and inefficient and b) The decision makers of big companies are quite traditional and don't see the real trend of work culture.

This cartoon compares a traditional linear prediction of work culture (Expectations) and what I think will actually happen (Reality). I also wanted to include one other row: Expectations = 50% male 50% female work split in every field. Reality = Analytics driven analysis of individuals creates a natural male / female ratio in different fields.

Social Media and truth

Hey folks. Another random cartoon to keep you uninterested. Throughout the US election I couldn't help but focus less on the candidates, and more on the way my friends and I were being informed. I, like many other young people, rely a lot on social media to get instantly informed about the world. Consequently, I noticed a plethora of 1 minute videos, memes and emotionally fuelled one liners pop up everywhere. This really annoys me because despite the fact that we live in a time when we have access to almost unlimited information, much of that useful information is diluted with emotional crap. 99% of what I saw online focused on Trumps hair, hands or way of talking rather than his proposed policies - which is what really matters.

Now I know what you're saying: "filter out the dumb content and focus on the good stuff". Sadly this isn't so easy to do because even formal debates on respected News channels are still structured in a way which adds to confirmation bias. The whole idea of a debate where 1 person is "versing" another person is inherently flawed - instead there should be a collaborate effort by experts to analyze on agreed data.

This image describes just the influence social media plays in keeping us in our own echo chamber. TV, Newspapers and social groups all have their issues too.

In other news, I currently live in Sydney, I'm working for Smart Sparrow and I'm leaving for Delft at the end of July. Yeew!