Thu, 09 Aug 2007

No smoking area

Today is the 9th of August and we've been at a restaurant (well... a self service cafeteria). Nothing fancy so far about it, but it was the first time this month, which makes it kind of special: On the first a new law come into effect in Lower Saxony (and some other parts of Germany) prohibiting smoking in public restaurants (save in closed, separate rooms).

Being a non-smoker it was a nice experience to see how the former smoking area had vanished from the restaurant. Especially, since in that special case you couldn't avoid the smoking zone: To get to the toilette you needed to go through the smoking zone. And where do you bring your tablet back? Right, in the smoking zone.

Nice.

postet at 16:36 into [] permanent link

Tue, 29 May 2007

Donating blood

Sven Mueller wrote a nice blog about how important it is to donate blood. To cite him: Please donate blood if you can. If you are uncomfortable with the choice you made on your first donation, check out other options for donations.

I agree wholeheartedly! I heard from a Lady, who can't donate blood herself, since she doesn't feel comfortable with it -- I can understand it, I hate needles and don't like to see my own blood neither. But she wants to help nonetheless, so she volunteered to help during blood drives: She sits by the people donating blood, talks to them, helps them walk around when they still feel dizzy, give out food and drinks, etc.

postet at 18:59 into [] permanent link

Sat, 26 May 2007

Doing stuff I should have done quite some time ago...

Yesterday I did something, I should have done a long time ago. I donated blood. I donated blood several times already, especially when I was in army service and a nearby University hospital called for help, when they where running low. I must confess it wasn't only the feel good factor that motivated me back then; you could donate blood during your duty hours, got some money, something to eat a way better than the normal food we got and additionally you where freed from heavy duty for two days. Even after I got out of military service, I went a couple of times to donate blood.

But for some reason -- I don't know why -- I stopped for a couple of years. Well; the funny thing is, that the German red Cross has often these collect blood sessions in a nearby school, which is on my way back to university, but even that didn't worked. I always had something else in mind or planed for that evening.

However, the other day we found a flier of one of those collect blood sessions yesterday evening. And so we went there... and where surprised how many people wanted to donate blood! I can't remember that I ever had to wait to donate blood, but this time they said they had many first time donors, which need special care.

Rest of the story is easy: After some interesting conversation (You know how that works? -- Yes, I look away, and you do the rest and tell me nothing!), Meike and myself had half a liter less, and enjoyed a very nice meal.

As I already said: I don't understand, why I didn't did it for such a long time; nice atmosphere, nice things to eat, nice people taking care of you... I'm going to donate more often. Perhaps you want to try it, too?

postet at 12:35 into [] permanent link