Most of you know how important sound is to me, and I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard what this little device does to the sound of my laptop.

A friend of mine owns one, and after trying it for a couple of hours I had to get one. They are cheaper in the States, but also very affordable in Germany. Increasing the sound quality by 500% for 42€ sounds like a good deal to me.

You can find the Logitech Z305 for example on Amazon. And no, I did not get money for this review. I wish I had!

Today, I cooked. All kinds of things. Because I was hungry. For instance, Zucchini with salt, pepper, lemon and balsamico, in the oven. Fresh garlic bread. Fresh pasta.

And then, a person came into the room. And took two old slices of pizza out of the frigde. Three days old. He prepared them in the oven, next to my tasty, fresh, healthy and utterly vegetably Zucchini. Until the slices were burned. He didn’t care for them much, I think.

And then he sat down in front of me, and I looked at him, through the piles of delicious food on my side of the table. On two big plates.

He said: “Ah, I don’t like this. Any chance you want to eat this?”

He said this because he works in a pizza store. And he had eaten this very pizza – that is, the other 10 out of 12 slices – for three days.

I ended up eating the pizza. He ended up eating beans, because he wanted beans.

Surely I will eat my delicious food at some point.
Tomorrow, maybe.

by Sam Brown

I’ve been here for 3 months now, and wanted to take a bus for the first time yesterday. So far, I have been getting around nicely with my bike or simply per pedes, but winter is coming – and it is coming a lot later than usually (I am not complaining).

I stood at the bus stop, waiting for my bus, which did not come. Another bus came, though. The ladybusdriverperson opened the doors, but I told her I was waiting for another bus, for my bus. I put my earphones back in, and after 20 seconds the same bus arrived again at the stop, this time from the other direction, driving backwards. The wonderful ladybusdriverperson told me that she had pondered about what I had said, and there was no other bus coming at this particular bus stop for another 5 hours (my bus apparently takes a prolonged fiesta between 10am and 5pm), but I could drive with her and she would explain me how to get to my destination.

And she did. In Ann Arbor, busses drive at an interval of around 30 minutes. The busdrivers have old black massive phones, connected to the machinery via cable, and before we arrived at the main transfer point, my wonderful ladybusdriverperson asked around which passengers were trying to catch which busses. After she had received this information she used her phone and told someone (I did not hear whom) that the other busses should wait.

People are special in the MidWest, my supervisor said. I am beginning to think this is true.

This is madness!

Update, 2 hours later:
Seriously?!

Don’t waste your time or time will waste you ♪♫ …

Luft kühl, Sonne warm, Bäume bunt, Menschen schön.
Alles gut.

Daniel from the ARTflakes.com team wrote me an email two weeks ago, asking whether I would like to start a cooperation with them. They host photographs and advertise, artists keep full copyright, and in case something gets sold, get some part of the revenue.

It’s really a bit like my gallery on TheUntappedSource.

Anyway, I had some time to upload pictures today. Here is the result. I’d appreciate some feedback.

First of all: you must not bring poison, weapons, or “obscene material” into the US. Whatever that means. Interestingly enough, the first store I encountered leaving the airplane at Miami airport was a store for, let’s say obscene objects.

Leaving Detroit Airport after 24 hours of air conditioning was a bit of a shock. Random fact: if you want to go from Fahrenheit to Celsius, you calculate (°C – 32) / 1.8.

A colleague wrote:

Great to get so much help from people. You are in the Midwest. It is a special place in the world.

I find it always hard to describe people, to describe a way of living. Are people different in different countries? Yes, but is very hard to give specific answers. What I find most interesting is: when I hear people talking to each other, I cannot hear within the first seconds whether these people are strangers or family members. That is definitely different compared to Germany.

Things seem to have less distance here.

Checking for ways to spend my evenings within the first weeks, I found two activities that sounded promising:

• “Autumn Invasive Plant Removal Walk”, Thu 15 September, 6pm – 7pm
• “Princess and Pirate Party”, Sun 11 September, 5pm – 7pm. “Fee: $35 (includes Pizza)”. Oh yeah!

My house & backyard:

My neighbourhood:

My cat Dojia aka Muffin:

My flatmates are amazing. I went to three stores for cell phone contracts – they had pretty similar offers, but in one of them they played “Can’t touch this” by MC Hammer, so there wasn’t really much of a choice for me (the clerk replied “We keep it real!” when I remarked upon MC Hammer; also, my number is 734-604-9854). You can get absolutely unsweetened (!) icetea here, which was a bit of a surprise for me. Pickeral (or Pickerel) lake is clearly the most beautiful place in the US. In Miami, you don’t get far without speaking Spanish. Boehr is pronounced “bear”, and “salesperson” is actually an official job description (“Peter Porter, Salesperson, XYZ Company”).
It’s been 42 hours since I arrived in Ann Arbor. More to come soon.

Eiko Fried
C/O Amanda Taylor
220 South 7th Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48103
UNITED STATES