1. Lose some weight.
2. Save the galaxy from the Reaper invasion.

I achieved some progress on the first part and lost a few kilos so far. Naturally not as many as I hoped for but my weight is definitely going down.

I have however fulfilled the second part by finishing the single player campaign of Mass Effect 3 today. The Galaxy is once more save. No reapers, no Sith and nothing else lurking out there.

Let’s hope that will change soon.

But I was at least able to visit New Delhi in the afternoon as I felt a lot better by then. Here are a couple of photos I’ve taken of the India Gate monument:

There wasn’t enough time for me to really experience India. But I’ve nevertheless learned that it is a country with friendly people, chaotic traffic, delicious food and extreme contrasts.

Unfortunately I suffered a setback when Silke, Vader and I visited Germany last week. My phone stopped working: no calls, no text messages, only emergency calls. I searched through all the settings but couldn’t find the cause and finally had to give up.

When I was able to use the Internet via WiFi the next day I found the cause of the problem: my mobile phone provider T-Mobile disables international roaming for their customers by default. They claim that they do that to protect their customers from high phone bills. I’m sorry but I find that a rather unconvincing argument:

1. Whenever I switched on a mobile phone in a foreign country in the past I immediately received one or more text messages telling me how overpriced phone calls, text messages and especially mobile Internet usage are. If T-Mobile really doesn’t believe that their customers are able to understand such an obvious warning it would be somewhat insulting.
2. If T-Mobile were really that worried about their customers’ bills they could just reduce the horrendous roaming charges. Their roaming partner in e.g. Germany is the Deutsche Telekom, the owner of T-Mobile UK. I’m quite sure the two of them could agree on more customer friendly conditions if they only wanted to.

It was quite a hassle to get this fixed. I used a friends phone line to call T-Mobile support in the UK who enabled international roaming for me. After I power cycled my phone on their request it finally registered with a mobile network in Germany. I was relieved until I found out that I still couldn’t make calls to the UK or send text messages. I once again looked over all the phone settings but didn’t manage to find a solution. I sent T-Mobile an e-mail, they called me back (which I probably have to pay for with my next phone bill) but it still wouldn’t work.

When I was back in the UK I finally found the problem by comparing the settings of Chris‘s and my phone: mine had call barring enabled for international calls. I tried to disable it but it asked for a barring password which I didn’t know. I tried to enter the SIM PIN but I only got a Network/SIM error. I called T-Mobile again with gritted teeth. At first their support blamed the problem on my hand set  and claimed that I could find the barring password in my phone’s manual. When I told them about the error message they finally changed something on their end which after another power cycle of my phone got rid of the call barring. I hope this was really the end of it because I won’t know before I travel abroad the next time.

Overall T-Mobile’s disproportionate customer protection caused me a lot of trouble that I really could have done without.

After wandering through the city centre for a bit we made it to Times Square which looked spectacular in the dusk.

After a good steak for dinner we went back to the Hotel to catch up on lost sleep.

The next morning we checked out of the Hotel reasonably early, dropped of our bags at the airport and went back to Manhattan as our flight wasn’t leaving before the evening. This time we visited the Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy.

After wandering around for a while and buying some small presents we want back to the Airport.

As you have probably noticed we didn’t have that much time to tour the city. There are so many places left that I would really love to visit, so many things I would like to do. I guess I will simply have to come back one day, but this time with Silke and if at all possible with Vader as well.

It was a wonderful time ever since and I’m looking forward to more years with my lovely wife. We will celebrate our anniversary in proper style at Restaurant 22 this evening.

By contrast Silke and I had a really nice day. As we are both fortunate enough to be able to work from home we could avoid the traffic chaos. Silke took a few photos in the morning and we had a snowball fight afterwards.

During our lunch break we even build a small snowman.

In the afternoon it got a bit warmer and the snow began to melt. I guess that most of it will be gone by tomorrow.

However things have changed. DHL tried to deliver a package this week when Silke and I were both at work. Dealing with them afterwards turned out to be really frustrating:

1. There was no useful information on the card: no tracking number, no sender address, not even the recipient.
2. Instead of an e-mail address the card only listed a phone number. When I tried to call the phone number an automatic operator connected me to the local service centre which was already closed.
3. When I called again on the next morning they still couldn’t tell me the recipient. As the package originated from another country they weren’t able to access the details.
4. They could not arrange for a delivery attempt on the same day which meant I had to wait at least another day.
5. When they insisted that I need to authorise the delivery to my work address via Fax I finally gave up. I decided to collect the package at the DHL service centre instead.
6. DHL do of course not have a service centre in Cambridge. I will therefore have to drive to Bar Hill.
7. When Silke and I finally arrived in Bar Hill we found out that the driving directions on the card had led us to the wrong DHL building.

It goes without saying that I’m really happy about all the improvements that DHL made to their customer service.

I felt a mixture of anticipation and apprehension when we arrived at the Goldener Hahn. But after sighting the first familiar faces I began to relax. The first pleasant realisation was that I’m not the only who got older. I actually still have more hair and less grey hair than some of my former schoolmates. And while a lot of them have gained weight I lost one or two kilos in the last 20 years.

Mario and I spent the rest of the evening talking to as many schoolmates as we could. Unfortunately not all the people I would have liked to meet attended the party. But most of the people I didn’t really need to see again weren’t there either. The hardest part was to remember everybody’s name.

During the evening I realized that I knew next to nothing about the girls on my high school. Well, considering that I was a fairly overweight geek with a lot of spots back then I shouldn’t have been surprised.

Alltogether it was a really nice event. I hope there will be another reunion in a few years.