Mark's Travels

10 years of travel blogging from 35+ countries around the world

Hungover for the first day at Volkswagen and lots of reflections on life 21st October 2002 in Wolfsburg, Germany


This morning I woke up hung over from last night. I felt like absolute shit. About quarter to 11 the other co-owner of COMbridge picked us up and drove us to the Volks Wagen Business park. I got there, I met some fellow co-workers and then they got me an office. I did some programming and SQL work for a few hours. At lunch we went to the Volks Wagen Business Park Restaurant. You can"t pay for food with cash, they give you an access card to use instead. I had some chicken, rice and veggies for lunch. Afterword I came back and did some more work. It seems a little surreal to be working on web and database applications on a high end notebook with Public Enemy and Ice Cube playing in winamp in one of the world"s largest car manufacturers.

Around 3pm we headed to a hotel where we had a company meeting. I presented the software I"m programming. I explained that there isn"t any application that I couldn"t write nor is there any feature that I cannot impliment and gave examples with my portfolio. I encouraged my fellow co-workers to think with open minds and imagine the world when giving software specifications. As well I waved the open source flag declaring that with PHP, MySQL, Apache and Visual C++ there isn"t anything we can"t do. We have the tools, know-how and capital to finally reach our financial dreams.

They seemed shocked when they saw the multi-lingulisation in my software working. I switched my software between German and English on they fly and showed that it had capabilities for any langugage by switching everything to Arabic at one point. I explained how I had used a specific design pattern so that the entire multi-lingualisation backend can be completely altered while running live and none of the source code would need to be altered nor would the software using the backend be adversly affect. They seemed to have enjoyed my presentation and they clapped at the end of it.

I say financial dreams because I have dreams that aren"t work related. I have these dreams to keep me balanced and give me a soul. Asperations that challange me and will give great rewards to myself and the people in my life all over the world. Without these goals in the field of my vision, life would be pointless.

When I reach my goals I never think much of them. They don"t seem significant anymore. Maybe because my goals are too easy to reach or don"t require much effort in hindsite. Maybe because I forget the struggle to reach them in order to make life seem more positive that it has been in the past.

Perspective changes everything. If I think about it, my life could of been a series of horrible experiences occuring one after another. Nothing but horrible challanges and consiquences. If I think about it in a positive light then it seems as though things have always been perfect and everything has landed in place just the way I wanted. I almost thought of removing all the jobs off of my CV except for PSINet and Eclipse. But then, when someone reads my CV, not to employ me, but to understand where I"ve come from, they wouldn"t see where I started, where I"ve been or where I"ve climbed up from.

When I worked at Moxies my entire life was: "I lived in England, I wash dishes, play on the computer and hang out with Twilla". When I washed dishes in London my entire life was: "I"ve been in England for a year. I want to be a computer programmer. I"m broke and not doing what I want in life". I would forget most of my past because those experiences wheren"t being used at the time.

Today when I introduced myself to my co-workers I said: "Hello, my name is Mark. I am from Canada. I am a Computer Programmer". I didn"t say what my hobbies are/were or what I enjoy in life. I didn"t describe what it is like to be me or what keeps me going because I change so much, I don"t really know myself. I tend to find a way of life and mold myself into it, modifying it in the process. I become "a dishwasher", I become "a programmer", I become "a sales person". I take what is the norm and all the stereotypes, put them on and then modify them slightly to better suit myself. Having a group that you "belong" to is an easy way for people to pretend that they have found themselves because that group has been well defined, documented and to some extent, understood. If I call myself a "programming geek", people will instantly know everything about me because there is a sterotype of programming geeks. But If I say I"m Mark Litwintschik it would take a massive amount of time to describe what I am and at the end of it there still would be no answer.

It"s as if there is a completely new, fresh Mark Litwintschik every time I start a new job. This new "Mark" doesn"t have a past or a base. You can"t see all that I"ve seen or get a complete understanding of me because not even I understand myself. The only thing that defines you is what is constitant in your life. London didn"t define me because I was only there two months. When my mother called last week and asked how my flat was, I said it"s called an apartment, I"m not in England anymore, so we don"t need to speak in English-English. I then looked up the way to say it in German. It"s as if my experiences in England are gone, forgotten and I didn"t take anything from England with me. I started in Germany completely fresh with nothing but my programming skills.

This evening we had a nice dinner where we got to meet with one another as well as our friends and family members. It was nice but I was still sick so I didn"t stay long. People seem to dawn on my language constantly. I think they"ll forget about it when the revenue from my software starts pouring in and my fluency is enhanced in school.

On monday I begin German school. I have a private teacher, I spend 90 minutes every monday to thursday studying. There will be some hands on practicing with grossery shopping, banking, telephone conversations, ect...

I"m really enjoying programming for a living. I don"t think I want to do anything else but write software for a living. German culture is taking time to get used to. I"ve always travelled to countries where people spoke English. When I went to Spain I was around Canadians and Australians and I didn"t need to speak much Spanish. When I went to Paris it was the same story, the most integration I did there was when I went to a house party of Artists where most spoke Spanish, French, Danish and German. That only lasted about 4 hours where I had to be multi-lingual. Now when I awake in the morning until I fall asleep at night, I am emmursed in German culture and the language. It is not my culture, it can be difficult at times with reading peoples emotions and trying to understand what is normal behavior for them and why they behave in the several ways they do. This definitly not the same as things were back home. People are a little more straight up, honest and skip the being fake friendly bull shit that plegued me at places like PSINet.

Quite honestly I like to hide and work. I love to see my work in action after hours upon hours of labour. I like to think about all the time I spent programming and how little time was wasted. It"s like being happy that you didn"t waste a single penny in an entire week in London, you spent only what you needed to, you got the best price and the best value. I like to have my back to a wall, no one see what I"m doing while I"m creating or have input until I"ve finished building. And then I can take their feedback and make my creation more powerful, stronger, more intelligent and efficent. But welcome to real world, people love to watch work in progress and change every specification in sight. I think I"m going to compile a document of all the good philosophies of programming. It comforts me.

I still vividly remember being yelled at in dodgy basement kitchens in London and working with people who couldn"t read or write and abused themselves constantly. I remember people hating their life because they would never make anything of themselves. I remember how quickly I went from working in a UNIX Shell to being soak and wet washing dishes in a hot, smelly and cramped kitchen. These memories encourage me to work harder and harder. It only takes one down turn in the market for me to end up back there. I"m going to ensure I save as much money as posible and avoid the excesses that come with good fortune. If I keep humble and focused I should never have to work at a job that I dread or live in dangerous and dodgy conditions.


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