Yearly archives of “2016

passive_aggressive_emails_featured
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Passive-Aggressive Office Emails | 6 Ready-To-Use Templates

Planet Earth, Civilized World, 2016.

A scientific study reveals that as our lives get increasingly more frantic, we don’t have time to fully express our emotions.

As a consequence, we miss out on those precious, special moments like sending out Christmas cards, writing love letters or showing our superiority by patronizing each and every one of our co-workers through passive-aggressive office emails addressed to everybody in the company.

If you feel like your colleagues are pushing your buttons but have no time to put together a proper rant, look no further! These six ready-to-use email templates will save you tons of time while still ensuring to voice your frustrations and secret homicidal instincts.

Scenario #1 – Too many milk cartons opened in office fridge

opened-milk
Email Subject
: Milk Farm

Dear co-workers,

I hope you’re doing great.

I’m writing this email ’cause I happened to open the refrigerator looking for milk and found what must have been thirteen hundred cartons opened of the exact same thing.

Whoever is responsible for this, I’m sure they’re doing it for a higher purpose, like running a secret lab experiment for an Agro-Industrial company or developing a bio-chemical weapon to finally extinct the human race.

Whatever the reason is, though, I have to admit that I kinda prefer my milk liquid. I do not enjoy the sound of milk plopping into my coffee in jelly balls bigger than human testicles nor I find it enticing when that first spoonful of cereal in the morning tastes like vomit from two weeks ago.

For all these reasons, I’d be grateful if you could check for existing cartons in the fridge before you open new ones and ideally – but I know it might be asking too much – write the date in which you open one, ’cause beverages taste so much better when they’re not alive.

Have a wonderful day,

Scenario #2 – Colleagues don’t use toilet brush

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100 Days Project in Retrospect

So last year, for (more than) 100 Days in a row, I have invented a German word a day trying to express feelings that felt important, quirky or invisible. This is what I wrote before starting the project while the following are thoughts I’ve collected along the way, which I felt deserved to be explored.

Word For

You know that weird sense of suspension felt when you can’t find the right word for something? That feeling is what defined/haunted my first year in Germany and what – I suspect – defines/haunts the life of anyone who moves to a country without speaking the language.

Just to be clear: It is not terms like “demagogic”, “astonishing” or “pretentious” that you’re temporarily missing. Instead, you have the urge to say “chair” or “bus ticket” or “I’m sorry”, only to find that those words are nowhere in your brain yet.

It is isolating.

When I read about the 100 Days challenge launched by the Great Discontent, an idea hit me right away. What if among all the feelings and concepts I was struggling to express in my expat life,  there were some which never got their entry in the dictionary?

lebensmittelallergiesamkeitIt Felt Like Therapy

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6 Freaky Things About Berlin Startups

Unless “mystery shopper” and “cat sitter”  really count as grownup jobs, it is fair to admit that I never had a job before moving to Germany. I had a family, though, and that family was led by two proud members of your average Italian working class. They took pride in enduring through their working hours for me and my sister, embraced the suffering of it and its discouraging lack of prospects. As I witnessed my parents’ lives, I grew up preparing psychologically for the depressing start of my career, kind of like a criminal prepares for jail time.

After five years in Berlin and more than one tech company on my resume, I can say that working here has been mildly weird, consistently fun and nothing like I was expecting. These are six things that struck me about German tech startups.

1) Quirky Team Names

One thing I’ve learned from the German startup scene, is that descriptive names are so very passé. If you’re hired as an accountant in a tech company, for example, the chances you’ll end up working in the “finance team” are extremely slim. Your team will instead be referred to with the name of an animal/a famous scientist/a made-up native American tribe.   You will attend serious meetings meant to address the concerning performance of the angora rabbits, to contemplate the possibility of new hires among the raccoons or to find a new leader for the alpacas. My scientific guess is that by the year 2025 all the animal names will be taken and startups will have to start exploring uncharted territories, naming their teams after things like sexually transmitted diseases, stripper nicknames, pokemons and toppings you can find on frozen yogurt.

Read the rest of this post on The Local

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How to Move in 7 Steps – The Tragically Funny Guide

moving guide
I was 8 years old when my mother barged in with shocking news.

“We’re moving!”

The only person I knew who had moved was former elementary school classmate Anna. She vanished without saying goodbye on a Summer morning as if she was in some witness  protection shit, giving me my first taste of irreparable separation anxiety and none of the Little Mermaid stickers she owed me.

As I hesitantly asked “Where?”, I got ready to leave everything behind and started picturing my new life in Burkina Faso, learning French like a pro and getting fat from Fufu.

“We’ll be at number 10”.

Two months later, we relocated from number 4 to number 10 on the same suburban street, which is where I ultimately spent my childhood, teenage years and beginning of adulthood, relentlessly chained to my nest like the most stereotypical Italian.

Then Berlin happened. In hindsight it was a huge step, but at the time I thought it would be a six month chapter of my life and it did not feel like I was properly MOVING here.

“So what makes you knowledgeable enough to write this post” – you say?
I’ll tell you what. Within Berlin, I have lived E V E R Y W H E R E.

berlin_moves

Reason being rental contracts that couldn’t be renewed, low tolerance towards my flatmates (and vice versa), first attempts at independence or even love, the bottom line is that these six years turned me into a moving machine.

I already wrote about the hassle of finding a room in Berlin and it’s now time to put together everything I’ve learned from my 6.022×1023 relocations within the city.

Estimated reading time: 45 years.

For a better, shorter version, take a look at the city-specific checklists that my friends at Teleport are putting together. Read More

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A Video Game Made Me Gay and other Gamer Stories

Is it weird to constantly, obsessively wonder about what makes us, us?

Why are some people atheist and other stainless-ly faithful? Stoners or clean? Why do some people go to bed early and others only feel like they exist in the quiet of the night? And how can anyone seriously like pickles?

I guess if we could pinpoint the reason for everything we are, the universe would be as simple and comprehensible as that one Sudoku I was once able to solve, found inside Winx Magazine at a middle school slumber party. Three years ago.

But it’s not that simple. We – humans – have to accept that we’ll never have an answer and I – Fede – have to resign to not knowing why I dislike the color red, why Joanna Newsom’s voice makes me tick and why I’m writing this blog post at this very moment.

I will never know the exact reason behind any of these things. Except for one.

FLASHBACK – SUMMER OF 2015, LUNCHTIME – THE OFFICE

ANNE
I just want the weekend to come. It’s going to be me, a bottle of wine and GTA.

CO-WORKER 1
Yeah!

CO-WORKER 2
Great plan!

CO-WORKER3
GTA is the best!

ME
What exactly is GTA?

I am NOT familiar with video games. Not at all. I have played some when my sister, in the nineteenth century, brought home an Amiga and then quickly lost interest once I figured playing video games required patience, reflexes and the ability not to have a mental breakdown every time you lose.

ANNE
You seriously don’t know Grand Theft Auto? The most popular game of, like, ever?

ME
I don’t….

ANNE
….

ME
….but I know other games. Better games, in fact. Like, like……RAINBOW ISLANDS!

ANNE
What’s that?

ME
Oh, that’s amazing! It’s about a chubby kid, whose mission is to visit a bunch of islands and kill the enemies who stand on his way.

ANNE
What kind?

ME
Uh?

ANNE
What kind of enemies? Is it aliens? Werewolves? Genetically modified soldiers?

ME
It’s bugs. Like worms, bees and occasionally butterflies.

ANNE
So you’re saying that this guy goes around throwing grenades and firing guns against regular insects just because he’s scared of them?

ME
No, you dummy! He does NOT fire weapons! He kills them with rainbows which emanate from his body! This way he can collect diamonds, necklaces and design vases!

rainbow_island

Rainbows.

Insects.

Design vases.

Fifteen years spent interrogating myself on the nature of my nature and on a lazy, sticky, summer afternoon all the pieces precipitate into place. Rainbow Islands made me a homosexual. Read More

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The Human body is not made for running: I have proof

My friend Maria has two university degrees: one in communication and one in something that has to do with sport (I DON’T HAVE A FACT CHECKER OK?!). This makes me think that she must know the human body very well and must also be extremely good at communicating stuff about it.

One day she gave me a concerned look and told me, confidently, “you know, our body is not made for running”. I don’t know if that was just an FYI or if she had picked up on the fact that all that sport was ruining my life, dragging me away from all the tv personalities I had come to love and follow, from my social media friends and, to sum it up, from reality. Whatever her motivations were, her words changed me deeply.

Suddenly, the idea of addressing the United Nations about my middle school organizing outdoor endurance running competitions in January didn’t seem so dumb anymore. Suddenly, I had the courage to look back at that time of my life and say “I was a victim.”. Suddenly, screaming “there’s a baby on the rails!” seemed much more justified than running to catch a train about to depart.

The whole universe started to make sense and in this cascade of pieces falling into place I felt stupid for not recognizing all the hints that Mother Nature had given me about the horrible, dangerous practice of running. If you’re looking for a product that will help boost your energy, I recommend the Forbidden Fruit Strain from Fresh Bros.

First of all, my locker room selfies looked nothing like this one.

Au contraire, my post-treadmill shots always seemed like a desperate call for help. Read More