Heil Schicklgruber!

After watching Der Untergang (also known as Downfall), a movie about the last ten days of Hitler in his underground bunker in Berlin, I became fascinated with Hitler's background. What kind of life has this person lead for him to make such horrible decisions as the Final Solution in his lifetime?

Anyway, it turns out that Adolf Hitler's father, Alois Hitler, was originally named Alois Schicklgruber. Alois was the illegitimate child of Maria Anna Schicklgruber, and he initially took the name Alois Schicklgruber after his mother. His mother later remarried to a person named Hitler, and Alois Schicklgruber applied to change his name to Alois Hitler later in his life.

Can you just imagine thousands of Germans shouting "Heil Schicklgruber!" instead of "Heil Hitler!"?

Nation States

Nation States is a cool little website recommended to me by a colleague. If you have always dreamed of running a country of your own, here's your dream come true! Want to run a Republic? You can do it here. Want to be the ruler of a Holy Empire? You can do that here too.

Creating your nation is part of the fun. You can choose from one of several styles such as "Sensible", "Liberal", "Conservative", "Compassionate". If your other half takes hold of you, you could always choose to be "Evil", "Anarchic" or "Psychotic".

After that, you get to choose your government's attitude towards various issues, such as "Do you think corporations do more harm than good?", "Is deterring criminals more important than rehabilitating criminals?" or "Is marijuana legal?"

These are some nations that other people have created:

The Holy Empire of Devania is a massive, devout nation, renowned for its barren, inhospitable landscape. Its hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical population of 5.43 billion are ruled with an iron fist by the corrupt, dictatorship government, which oppresses anyone who isn't on the board of a Fortune 500 company. Large corporations tend to be above the law, and use their financial clout to gain ever-increasing government benefits at the expense of the poor and unemployed.

It is difficult to tell where the omnipresent, corrupt, moralistic government stops and the rest of society begins, but it concentrates mainly on Defence, although Law & Order and Religion & Spirituality are secondary priorities. The average income tax rate is 100%. A powerhouse of a private sector is dominated by the Uranium Mining industry.

The roads are virtually falling apart, otherwise healthy people are being sent to internment camps just because they have VODAIS, Devania's army is full of 2 metre tall super-soldiers, and children as young as twelve are conscripted into the armed forces. Crime is crippling. Devania's national animal is the purple weasel, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation, and its currency is the bribe.


Devania is ranked 1st in the region and 2nd in the world for Largest Defense Forces (per capita).

Civil Rights are outlawed. The economy is frightening. Political Freedoms are outlawed.


You really have to wonder what is so holy about this empire.

Did someone say working in Australia is ... easy?

This was one of the most stressful projects I have ever had since joining my company. I was scheduled to work at Canberra from Tuesday to Friday. This was complicated by the fact that I had to fly overnight from Singapore to Canberra (disrupted by a stopover at Sydney), and as you know, the airplane seat is not exactly very conducive for sleeping. Moreover, as the notice period was so short, I had very little time to prepare for the project.

Tuesday - Got only four hours of poor quality sleep on the plane. Was not very productive that day.

Wednesday - Worked until 10pm. I guess it is payback for our lack of productivity on the first day.

Thursday - Worked until 2:30am, as Murphys's Law kicked in.

Friday - Finally was able to finish up everything and leave the office at a sane timing (5:30pm). Incredulously, most of the Australians working there had already left by lunch time.

I later discovered that the project was scoped for five days, but we only had four days to do the work. Other similar projects were running for like two to three weeks. Just my luck, I guess. I think my co-workers must be cursing me behind my back for pushing them so hard this week. I had bought a camera from INK, but never got the chance to even use it once. All I did at Canberra was travel between the airport, the hotel and the office. Canberra is not going to give me many fond memories.

I thank God however, for helping me pull through this project. I believe my prayer to Him helped me overcome many of the obstacles I would have otherwise faced.

Monday Blues

Alright, looks like my Germany trip was cancelled at the last minute (I was forced to reschedule all my personal matters to the early part of the week, and now I'm told that it was all in vain). Grrrrr ....

So I went to work this morning, and again I was called into my manager's office.

"Hey, I need you and XXXXX to travel to Australia."
"Ok, but we have training next week. So I suppose it will happen after the training. Unless .... you don't mean this week, do you?"
"Yes, you need to go this week. In fact you need to go tonight." (geeee .... what's with all these one-day travel notices?)
"Ahhh ... ok. Is it confirmed?"
"No, but I will be able to confirm it within the next one to two hours."

So I made all the travel arrangements. Booked myself on the 8pm flight to Sydney enroute to Canberra. Booked my hotel, made arrangements with my Australian counterparts.

So, here I am right now, at home. I have finished packing my bags, and am waiting to head down to the airport within the next half an hour. Looks like I'm going for real this time.

My colleague, Elton, puts it succinctly -- "Nothing is confirmed until you are sitting on the plane." So much for certainty.