Customs

You might expect a thorough search at customs and be right. Or you expects nothing and just a couple of polite questions are asked.
We arrived by plane and were quite surprised by the no hassle handling of our arrival. Customs only packed the mobile phone of my friend and handed it over to our guide, who returned it by the end of our journey. We speculated, which of our “belongings” we should list on the small form for customs. At the airport no search of our suitcases.
We took the railway out from Pyongyang to Dandong. A North Korean business man joint us in our compartment. Shortly before the border our passports were collected and customs entered the train. The thorough officer turned every carpet and looked behind the seats. We had to put our cameras on the desk to be inspected for unfavourable pictures, which were on the cards in abundance! But then he searched the business man’s purse and found a SIM card. He had licked blood. And he found a memory stick and another SIM card. We had to leave the compartment. Did the business man have to strip? Did he pay a bribe? We never found out. Then some CDs had to be played on the laptop, memory sticks were checked. Then they took the business man out of the waggon together with his laptop. We reentered the compartment and put our cameras away. Just before the train left North Korea, the business man came back. In searching him they didn’t have the time to go over my 2200 plus and my friends 1300 plus pictures. But it had been close. Finding one picture would have been enough to erase the card – at least those were the thoughts crossing our minds.

Tranquillity

Hans Magnus Enzensberger once said: „Luxury in our days is clean water, clean air, partial control about our time. And quietness.”
You’ll have lots of quietness in North Korea, a country with hardly any traffic and no night life at all. You may drive on motorways without jams. But you might also wait for a train to come that won’t come. Would you miss the deep sound of motorbikes? The throbbing of cars in eight parallel lanes? I didn’t. Yet some North Koreans think that this only shows a stagnant society.
Tranquillity. In the Buddhist temples you might find peace of mind. Some monks will only be pretending and know more about the times Kim Il Sung visited the area than about Buddhism. But that’s another story.

A very special display of Metta (compassion)

While visiting Beijing last week I had the opportunity to meet with a friend, who cannot access Twitter since 2009 as the Chinese government stopped Twitter in China. Maybe you remember @shixianjia or @rosemary0 from this time.
I’ve met Rosemary at the Summer Palace (颐和园) and we took a bus to Longquan Temple (龙泉寺), which takes quite a while as the temple lies in Beijing Fenghuangling (Phoenix Mountain) Nature Park (北京凤凰岭自然风景公园) outside of the city; it is 51 kilometers away from Tiananmen Square and 23 kilometers from Summer Palace.
We’ve met Sheila and the three of us visited some of the temples walked over the old stone bridge, or sat beneath a shady Gingko tree. The Longquan Temple had been built initially in 951 and is the first Buddhist temple that had been formally opened in Beijing’s Haidian District. While walking in the vicinity of the stupa, Rosemary suddenly told Sheila, that she had a mosquito on her forehead. She tried to help her get rid of the mosquito, but it was already sucking blood. Sheila told her to let it go, as it will drop off, when it has sucked enough blood (吃饱了), which the mosquito did. Thank you, Sheila for demonstrating how far Metta can reach.

Vergleichbarkeit von unerwünschten Arzneimittelwirkungen / Risiko von Medikamenten

Wenn man heute über Nebenwirkungen von Medikamenten aufklärt, kann man über sehr viele Einzelheiten reden, aber wirklich anschauliche Zahlen für ein Gesamtrisiko fehlen. Die Neuzulassung von Medikamenten sieht Studien vor, die solche Zahlen erfassen. So sollten anschauliche Zahlen, vielleicht zunächst als freiwillige Angabe, von der Pharmaindustrie gefordert werden.
1. Zu wie vielen unerwünschten Nebenwirkungen kam es insgesamt im Beobachtungszeitraum in Prozent.
2. Zu wie vielen schweren unerwünschten Nebenwirkungen kam es insgesamt im Beobachtungszeitraum in Prozent.
3. Zu wie vielen Todesfällen kam es insgesamt im Beobachtungszeitraum in Prozent.
Mit diesen Zahlen ließe sich das Risiko verschiedener Therapieoptionen besser vergleichen. Aktuell versucht man mehr den Erfolg verschiedener Therapien als das Risiko zu vergleichen. So einfach, wie in diesen wenigen Zeilen angerissen, wird es nicht sein, aber man könnte beginnen, Absprachen zu treffen, wie diese Zahlen erstellt werden könnten.

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Ich schreibe zu wenig in meinem Blog - ich weiß! Hier nur ein Test.

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Frühlingsgedicht

Du schöner Frühling

Du schöner Frühling
Du frisches Grün der Bäume
Du Weide mit den Blumen
Du blauer Himmel
Du strahlende Sonne
Du schöner Frühling
Du Glück des ErdenRunds

Recommendations for a sound sleep

• Keep a regular sleep-wake cycle, i.e. go to bed get up at similar times or at fixed times, even on weekends.


• Go to bed only if you are tired. If you can’t find sleep within half an hour, rather get up and do progressive muscle relaxation after Jacobsen.


• Slip out of the day slowly. Don’t take problems into the night to solve or to brood over, rather make a note for the next day and then pick up the problems again.


• Watching TV is often unfavorably.


• Develop rituals: - e.g. evening bath, not too strenuous with additives such as Valerian, Melissa, orange blossom, about 2 hours before the bed go, - or the famous glass of hot milk, do a fantasy trip.


• Avoid tea and coffee in the afternoon; this may also include chocolate, ginger, chili, and others.


• Late snack of carbohydrates, such as bananas, dates (serotonin), green salad.


• Give up smoking, especially no smoking at night.


• Avoid alcohol and certain drugs (Tranquillizer and barbiturates).


• Daily exercise, but not within the last two hours before you go to bed, no extreme sports during the evening.


• Avoid cold feet to, for example by a warm foot bath.


• Keep dream diary.


• No napping during the day (go sleepers can benefit from a nap during the day or a siesta, however.


• The mattress should be pleasant, and therefore must have individually different hardness and perfectly adapt to the shape the body in different positions. Think also of the possibility of a water bed.


• Prepare the room for sleeping: - dark, cool, - quiet, - put off the heating, - fresh air, - lavender pillow, - no TV - the color blue.


• Don’t count sheep or spell backwards Czechoslovakia.


• You may try Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy (4. Wiener school): try to stay awake (and you will fall asleep).


• Turn the dial of the clock away.


• Exchange a loud ticking clock.


• If you must get up at night but, avoid bright light.

PS. I've just read: in "Never give a Sucker an even break", W.C. Fields is ooffering a cure for insomnia: "Get plenty of sleep". Goof luck!

07.11.2013