Its PISSING rain... constant, unremitting heavy rain.

Speaking of maglev trains... they're going to build on here soon.  Its due to go between the Hauptbahnhof and Munich airport, and will cost a mere €1.85 billion.  Everyone seems to be against its construction, and even the mayor is running for re-election on it next year.  However, the technology behind it seems pretty cool.  Its a maglev, so it works by being suspended above a track by magnetism.  The company behind it wants to test their new technology, and wants the government to pay for it... just like they did in Shanghai interestingly enough.

Ireland just ranked 17th on the annual poll of how corrupt we perceive our countries to be. That's the 17th LEAST corrupt country in the world!  Germany ranked 16th, which is nice.  The interesting thing is, I obviously read the Irish news to keep track of what's going on at home, and every day there's something new about some minister being exposed for taking backhanders from some company.  Here in Germany I get the same impression too.  Stoiber, who is the minister in charge of Bavaria has reputedly gotten something out of the decision to build a maglev train between Munich airport and central station.  Every day, they're bitching about the ministers here too.  So, I wonder just how accurate this poll really is?  From their web site :   "The Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index ranks countries in terms of the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians. It is a composite index, a poll of polls, drawing on corruption-related data from expert and business surveys carried out by a variety of independent and reputable institutions."  Linkage.

Windows Server 2008 RC0 was just released, and my server is still in storage.  I don't know why the moniker RC (Release Candidate) 0 has been specified - to the best of my knowledge the release candidates have always started at 1.  Who knows.  The good news is that I seem to have kept a lot of the rights with the Microsoft Beta community even after I left AOL and moved abroad.  Vista SP1 first build came out today too, and I'll be testing that also when I get my life back.  By life, I mean the two machines downstairs in the cellar (Server and Desktop) which are running Vista Ultimate and Windows Server 2008 (early CTP but can't remember the build number).  Soon... only four and a half weeks to go until our new apartment is ready :-)

The strangest thing happened last night.  I was feeling a bit acidy when I went to bed.  At some point later, I awoke having just vomited on the floor.  It was the strangest thing; no warning, none of the usual signs that I should be sick, it just came out there and then.  A bit like this really - though not as spectacular!  I felt pretty crap all day today, and I still have no idea why.  To cap it all off, Anna has come down with a nasty cold too, and is running a fever at the moment.  We were supposed to meet Al and Sylvia today at the Wiesn (Oktoberfest) but that didn't happen.  So we'll hook up with them later in the week hopefully.  Should be fun.

So long between posts, which isn't really that unusual for me, but the reason is.  We have moved and are getting stuff setup.  We signed the lease contract on an apartment today, and picked up some temporary mobile numbers (email me and I'll send them on).  We also have a bank account setup.  For all the bureaucracy, it is actually a hell of a lot faster than it took to get the same things done in London.  IIRC, it took me about a month to get bank accounts setup in London, despite our building being right in front of the bank.  So we filled out the forms, and cards and codes have been arriving for days now!   Whatever about the efficiency, it has also been frustrating.  Not knowing the language is turning out to be a real pain in the arse.  More so than I had expected, or anticipated.  I can get along because I'm married to someone who speaks the language, but can someone tell me how the hell do immigrants without a compatible language manage to do this???
So, as and from today, we have somewhere to live!  It is cheaper than we were paying in London, for something cleaner and far more modern.  Damn, when I think about it, it is a lot nicer than that place in Richmond for 1200 quid we looked at last year, and far bigger too.  Its in a place called Daglfing, in a complex built in the 80's (I think).  I'll get some images online as soon as I can, though I won't really have access to my stuff until mid November, which is when we move in.  Its still six to eight weeks until we can move in, but I guess that's a good thing too.  Our landlords want to put down new parquet flooring in a couple of the rooms, and it'll need cleaning up from the previous tenants.  Its large though; 70m2 with a balcony.  That's about 210 square feet for all the English out there.  (UPDATED : 70m2 is actually 753 square feet.  Thanks Scally, I was half asleep at the tine.!)  It has a spare room for guests / PC etc, a garage and a huge basement storage area.  The view from the balcony is of the central grassy area, and out the back windows all you can see are trees.  I'm too tired to finish this now, so I'll post it and update tomorrow...

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