Last week I had a small accident on my way home. I was driving with my bike on the right side of the street, with parked cars on my right, when suddenly, just one meter in front of me a car door from the driver’s side sprung open and I had barely enough time to swerve to the left while making a small warning shout. Unfortunately I wasn’t fast enough and the door clipped me on the shoulder and after a brief struggle for control, I ended up on my back in the middle of the road.
Fortunately the road behind me was empty, otherwise this could have ended far worse, but as it was, I didn’t get as much as a scrapped knee (I’m very good at falling. Years of experience as a kid. Hey, flaunt them if your have them.) After a brief pause to pause to compose myself, I got up and looked at the careless driver and…saw him checking up the door for damages…
I angrily shouted “Seht gut gemacht” which translates to “well done” but in retrospect I should have said something wittier, like “Is your door ok?” or something. At that point I was too shaken to be witty though. The guy, who was around his 60s, started apologizing profusely and people started asking what happened but at that point, once I verified that nothing was hurting, all I wanted was to continue on my way home. The driver of course was being now very very friendly and asking me if all is OK, if nothing hurts and so on.
Call me cynic but I know that his main concern was that he wouldn’t get sued. He was very fortunate that I had no damage on myself or my bike ((My bike actually stopped squeaking after this)) and he was especially fortunate I’m not a typical German. Almost every one I speak to says that if a typical German was in my position, they would have called the police immediately, just in case something started hurting down the line. From my perspective, calling the police, taking statements and so on would have been so much a waste of my time that it was just not worth it. The hassle I would go through would be far too much of a cost.
The whole incident however pointed out to me how material-oriented so many Germans are. The guy who hit me was primarily interested in the state of his car, not because a scratch is a big issue, but because the car wouldn’t be perfect and that would speak bad about him as a human person. It sounds ridiculous but far too many people around here think like that. It’s like a nation-wide Keep Up With the Joneses situation and it really ruins human relations.
It’s the reason people are so emotionally cold around here. The judge themselves, and consecutively others, by their material wealth and avoid mixing up to those lower than them. This in turn leads to more and more alienation from your fellow human beings. In the case of my accident above, another person would very likely have a more angry reaction to the door hit, not just because of the carelessness of the driver, but because of where the driver’s primary concern was. The fact that his first instinct was to make sure his status was social unaffected and not to worry about the person he could have harmed.
It’s like a prime example of how crass materialistc individualism can go wrong and poison our society as a whole.
Are you looking for janson.erik@hotmail.com or janson.denis@live.com? Did you help Denis go back to Greenland? I’m afraid you’ve been scammed.
Warning: Scammer!
So one month ago, I was scammed in the streets of Frankfurt. I hadn’t been in the mood to write about this until now but I think that slowly I should get around to doing it. I am also less angry about it now so I can write about it in a less charged way. So this is how it happened.
The Setup
A youngish looking guy calls me and my girlfriend over while we were walking down the street. He asks us if we speak English. When we confirm, he starts talking about how he is from Greenland, how he is passing through Frankfurt on the way to his country and unfortunately had his backpack stolen from him, including most of his student’s equipment and some of his studies. He introduces himself as Denis Janson.
He claims he’s been to the police to report the theft but as a result he lost his flight and there’s no other one leaving for at least two month and this will lead him to losing his current university year. Knowing how far Greenland is and how it’s still winter, this makes some sense. He claims his ambassador has helped him find an alternative route through Canada which would allow him to reach his country in time and his father, Erik Janson, has booked everything for him but unfrtunately there’s a ferry he needs to take which cannot be booked online. The ferry costs 250 Eur.
The story is elaborate. He keeps talking for about 10 minutes before he even comes around to the point of asking for our help. This gives us a very detailed story that convinces both me and my girlfriend by its sheer complexity and detail, that it’s true. Furthermore he has had a lot of preparation for this. He shows us the sms from the “ambassador”, he arranges a phonecall with his dad to which he speaks in some Scandinavian accent which my girlfriend confirms is authentic (she is in a profession which has a lot to do with linguistics so I trust her judgement). We speak to the “dad” who “wants to confirm I’m trustworthy”.
The plan is that the “dad” sends the money Dennis needs to me via a direct bank-2-bank transfer. He needs to do it this way because Greenland does not have a Western Union branch and the son has had his Debit & Credit cards stolen. Once he does this, he will send me the receipt that the money is on its way and I will then give the money directly to Denis.
If this was proposed from the get-go, I would have refused, however the detailed story, the preparation and the very god acting of “Denis” as a traveller in distress convince me. Both me and my girlfriend think “How would we feel in that situation? Wouldn’t we want someone to help us?”. We feel sorry for all the sudden problems he’s had to face and the fact that he’s stranded in a foreign country. We agree to help.
The Handover
I provide my bank account number and my name for the money transfer and Denis sends them to his “Dad” who will go to the local bank, do the transfer, scan the receipt and send it via email to me to confirm it’s done. While he is doing this, we start looking for an internet cafe to use to see this. While we are doing this, Denis is telling us the story of how his stuff was stolen (it involves him being too trusting) and the flak he received from his Dad when he told him. He explains what kind of personality his dad has, how he had to move away from home and become self-dependent.
Shit is detailed yo.
At around the same time we find an internet station in the Hauptwache, his dad sends an sms confirming that the transfer is done and the email is sent. I check my emails and see an email from Erik Janson that has this transfer receipt (detailed removed to protect the innocent). On a quick look, it looks legit. Denis made sure that I didn’t pay as much attention to it as he continued talking during this time and quickly asked to show us some pictures of his house in Greenland by using google image search.
It was here that I should have caught the scam. Had I paid a bit more attention I would have noticed the hotmail address and this would have sent alarm bells ringing. I would have then noticed the obvious photoshop of the receipt. But hindsight is always 20-20.
15 minutes later I’m satisfied that this seems legit. I escort Denis to the nearest ATM and I take out 350 Eur and give 300 to him. His “dad” gave us more and suggested we have a lunch with a friend. We dedide to use it to take Dennis to lunch.
We take him to a tavern in the Romer which is fucking expensive without realizing it. As a result, we end up ordering one dish for all together (think Tapas). He continues telling us stories of his life. Guy was convicing and I believe some of the stories must have been actually true. Once we finish lunch, we take some pictures together and this is how I have the one above and the this one. We paid for the lunch with the last 50 Eur that his “dad” gave us.
We then walk to the station and each of us goes on his merry way. We had already exchanged emails and skype usernames and said we’d keep in touch. He even suggested that he invites us to either Italy or Switzerland when he moves to either of them for studies.
The Aftermath
The scam happened on Saturday on the 20th of Feb (it was the only way to claim that he could not take money out of the bank normally) We were convinced that he was telling the truth until Monday, by which time I had not received anything yet. I decided to double check the evidence he had sent me. Doing so depressed and angrered me. It was obvious I had been conned. I could find no online profile connected to either his name or his given email address janson.denis@live.com . I could find nothing for his “dad’s” email either janson.erik@hotmail.com. Looking closer at the receipt, I could not see that it was an obvious shop. The parts with the transfer numbers where obviously written over it as it was missing the normal background. They must have taken this froms somoene and reused it for this scam. Looking even closer, I could see that the email from Erik, originated from Spain and the email address was obviously set up by some Spaniard.
And of course, the money never arrived.
Once I was certain this was a scam, I was disheartened and upset. I posted online hoping people might help but instead of that, I mostly received hostility. I was obvious I wouldn’t receive much help there. I also contacted the police. Yes I know this is not the most optimal option but given that I am stuck in a foreign country with very few direct action oriented friends and online help was not forthcoming, I felt that this was better than nothing. I didn’t expect them to achieve anything but having this guy’s picture on file, well, you never know.
Finally, I did my own investigation on this issue. I still have not tracked “Denis” but I am closer to tracking “Erik” and I believe he’ll feel the heat soon enough.
I was also contacted lately by a Belgian student who was also scammed by Denis 5 days after I was. This means that Denis left Germany immediately and moved to another country to play his con. The Belgian found out my reddit post by googling for Denis’ email and then contacted me directly for more info. He could at least use the pictures I put up to give to his own police. It seems thus that our scammer is quite the traveller and he is doing this act all over Europe.
Conclusion
I am not angry about the money. I am angry about the betayal of trust and the erosion of my feelings of mutual aid this scam has led to. It made me less willing to trust and help people and this angers me. It angers me that while I will control myself to retain them but also be more cautious, others will discard them altogether. Other people scammed in this way will not forever shut down all cries for help, even if they are legit, because they’ve been burnt by this asshole.
I wouldn’t mind if Denis played on greed to con people. Greed is something that should be attacked and if he had tried this with me, I wouldn’t have complained. However abusing people’s goodwill and thus making the world a more hostile place is inexcusable in my mind. He needs to be stopped.
How can we stop him? There’s no easy way. Police are useless, especially for catching a two-bit crook like him. We need to do it ourselves. We will possibly not “catch” him in any meaningful sense but we can certainly discourage him from doing this in the future if we found out his true identity. But finding that out is the difficult part. I was hoping to use the six degrees of separation to find him but very few people even tried to do the small effort of re-tweeting or asking their friends to ask their friends and so on.
You never know, perhaps this blog might prove me wrong.
So once we know his real ID, what do we do? There’s a few ideas in my mind but I think the only one which can actually do anything is social pressure.Drop his dox. Find out his friends and relatives and inform them of what “Denis” is doing. Make him feel the heat so to speak. Perhaps this won’t work. Perhaps this is a crook for life and has likewise friends who won’t care. Who knows unless we try though.
In any case, someone who lives from con to con cannot be the most happy guy. His own psychology will be his own worst enemy as he keeps getting to know people and then stabbing them in the back. I doubt anyone can sustain this kind of lifestyle for long. Perhaps this was a short-lived conjob that he tried for a bit of extra cash before going back to his normal and legit life. If so, all the more reason to uncover his IRL identity.
However sad a life this “Denis Janson” lives however, the sooner he is stopped from doing this scam, the better for all as less people’s feelings of mutual aid will be spoiled. And that to me is enough a reason to track him down. If you agree with me, then try to spread the word.
Liriel starts to notice the German mentality she had all her life and how it affects people and the stuff they use.
The following guest post was written by my Fiancée who, after living with me for more than a year now has started noticing how strong some of her German habits are and how some of the German commodities have a very…particular style. This is hopefully only the first of many posts to come from her in the future. Enjoy
The little bit of extra-tidiness in Germany
Since I am in a relationship to a Greek guy I am more and more questioned about the culture and manners in Germany. For example I realized that people who didn’t grow up here can’t even understand why a german is behaving so weirdly.
Consider the following situation:
I want to pick up my boyfriend and due to lack of parking space, I give him a short call to come outside and then stop on the sidewalk, in front of a private garage, with the motor running. Sidewalk has still 3 meters of space in width for the occasional pregnant with twins mother to pass easily.
It’s dark and rainy. A random guy walking on the pavement in direction of my car, beginning to hold his nose 5 m before reaching it. Stopping in front of it. Staring at me. Waiting…
I, knowing my beloved Germans, can’t be bollocksed to react. I am locking the doors (innocently, indeed it’s dark and that man could want to do something nasty to me 😉 ) and turning up the music. The guy walks to the front of my car. Staring at me, obviously expecting me to ask him what he wants. After that guy standing next and in front of my car for at least 2 minutes in a cold November rain, my boyfriend walks out of the house and gets into my car.
For me the situation was totally clear:
The guy was annoyed by a car parking on the pavement, which is a restricted area for cars and only reserved for people walking on it. Additionally to that, I kept my motor running which was insulting his nose and making the air dirty. He expected me to ask him what his problem was, which would be for him the ultimate opportunity to complain about my parking, accuse me of polluting the air with my diesel smell and not letting him walk straight (in fact, he would have had to pass my car in a slight curve).
Surprisingly, for my boyfriend it wasn’t clear at all:
“Did he want something from you? Why is he staring so accusingly?” He asked. My mouth dropped open and I needed a while to find the consciousness to close it again. That was the first time I realized how restricted the life is here in Germany. Our whole culture seems to guide us from childhood on while family members, friends and neighbours make sure during our lifetime, that all possible kinds of rules, laws, orders and expectations are followed.
How silly most of those are can’t be recognized by Germans anymore because we grow into it and take for granted that it is this way everywhere in the world. The only chance to having your eyes opened is somebody coming along and asking questions about fucking everything all the time! The Germans worst nightmare is Anarchy, because we are taught all our lives, that everything has to be regulated and can be regulated best by government or, at least, somebody else, an “expert.” Everything not strictly controlled must necessarily result in chaos and civil war.
Germans seem to need a bit more tidiness in their lives, always this additional bit that makes my boyfriend laugh repeatedly about offers in the supermarket. Tidy is not enough, super-tidy is what the average German is expected to aim for. If you’re looking into their bedroom it will most possibly be a mess like everywhere, but not showing that you don’t seem to be able to reach the highest goal of tidiness is what everybody works hard for. On the outside everything shiny, tidy and new, but don’t dare looking under the couch!
To support the Germans need for showing out his/ her tidiness and control over the chaos of custom goods all the country keeps buying to show their wealth, one of the top sellers are storage goods like a wardrobe hanger with holes for the scarf collection or this nice box I found (yes, I too am a German, and from time to time I buy storage goods!): Normally you would expect some random foldable box, looking like this:
What everyone would expect to get
But then, unpacking it, I found some additional gimmick that will just work to make my stuff look even more tidy:
Because everyone needs a special slot per sock pair
Because individual 10x10cm compartments are exactly what is missing to get everything organized.
We’ve visited the Anti-Capitalist demonstration in Mannheim in 26 Sep. 2009 and these are our impressions.
One of my latest attempts to figure out the Anarchist circles in my current place of residence, as an expat without a good grasp of the language, was to visit the anti-capitalist demonstration that happened yesterday noon in Mannheim. This was the first time I’ve seen such a demonstration in Germany so I wasn’t exactly certain what to expect, as my experience with it is mostly from Greece. A contact informed me to “expect repression and german demo laws” so the start was a bit ominous.
Unfortunately on the way there, we were a bit lost in finding our way around Mannheim so we ended up coming a bit late to the fun (about 20 mins) but hopefully the shouts and slogans of the demonstrators led us to the place everything was happening.
By far, the very first thing one notices is the very strong police presence. There were about 150-200 Anarchists in the middle, surrounded with banners and all around them where at least 50-100 policemen. The way the police had formed a wall around them was making it painfully obvious that this was a group of people “normal citizens” shouldn’t be interacting with. The feeling of domination by the police was painfully obvious as they were trying to contain the protesters.
It’s difficult to explain how much implied threat such a police presence registered. For all non-Anarchist onlookers, the police block gave all the “right signals” the state wanted to pass, that the people contained therein where dangerous elements you must be protected from. Furthermore, the heavy use of cameras all around the protestors and also towards onlookers made it even more obvious that your presence there was being noted, even if you were simply curious as to what the whole thing was all about. “Nothing to see here, move along. If you don’t then perhaps you need to be watched” was the feeling I was receiving.
Proof of such sentiments was further provided by Liriel, as an outsider looking in and with experience in previous German protests, she informed me that she’s never felt so threated before in her life for simply being in a public location, watching the proceedings. The police’s implied “You shouldn’t be here” attitude was very hard to ignore to such an extend that you’ll probably be reading soon another post in the Division by Zer0 written by Liriel about the whole thing.
If that wasn’t enough, the police made it painfully clear who is supposed to be watching whom here. As soon as I tried to take some pictures of the police presence, an officer walked over to me and in no uncertain terms made it clear to me that if I was to take one more picture of the police, he was going to take my camera and smash it. His hostility was unmistakable and during the protest, I saw him do the same thing to other onlookers 2-3 more times. Needless to say that didn’t stop us from taking pictures but only made us do it less obviously.
Soon more Anarchists gathered and we ended up with a large-ish group of people chanting and clapping on the outside of the enclosed group (including me). Needless to say, this didn’t make the police very happy as people could talk to onlookers now and spread leaflets freely. More than once the police tried to enclose the outside groups as well, especially if they became too loud but always people would disperse and reconverge a bit later to chant from the outside once more.
Once the demonstration started moving, the same situation kept occurring again and again, many people would follow the march from outside the police enclosure and chant along with the protesters. As the outsiders became more and more loud, the police would attempt to enclose them as well, on occasion running in front of us in order to block our way and redirect us within the main procession. People would then run backwards or split in side streets and meet up the process 100 meters later. No less than three times did I see the police taking to chase protestors who were trying to avoid being kennelled in like some danger to society.
By far the most humorous part of the demonstration was when the protest was passing in front of a bank. The police had already made a human wall in front of the bank, one assumes to prevent any random people rioting in that general direction. As we were passing it, I made a comment like “Now we can plainly see what the police are here for” which made a few people around me laugh out loud. But this is in fact the truth. Even though during the process the police never felt the need to protect anything else, as soon as the banks were involved, they sprang to preventative measures, showing their true duty as the gendarme of the plutocracy.
The rest of the march was uneventful, if humorous at times as one looked at the police’s desperate attempts to control the Anarchists. Eventually we reached the main train station where the whole thing halted and soon after the Anarchists within dispersed just as quickly as they had gathered. In fact it was quite strange the way it happened. I half expected it to be a break among Anarchists and Police so that each side could go grab some drinks and food before continuing. We milled around for a bit until we were certain nothing more was going to happen and then left.
In the end, I believe there must have been around 300 anarchists present and about 100 police, which is quite a big presence if one thinks about it. Unfortunately the whole demonstration was still quite small which further reinforces my belief that Germany (as well as most of the first world) has not yet felt the real effects of the looming crisis. I think that once the shit hits the fan, there will be far a bigger civilian presence and police repression. Future will tell.
Of course, just because in Germany things are not bad enough to make for big protests, doesn’t mean that the same applies everywhere…
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PS: Comic event of the day: As we were walking past a small market area parallel to the bigger march, we were shouting various anti-capitalist slogans. People weren’t really afraid of us and many were joking around. One stall-keeper asked us what this was about and when we explained she exclaimed: “Pirate Party Woooo!”, which was amusing to say the least. Not just because she confused our politics, but also because it showed how popular the Pirate Party in Germany has already become.
The amazing story of a colleague who came in late at night to find a stranger sitting calmly in his appartment using his laptop.
A colleague of mine, lets call him MB, just came into work a bit stressed and disheveled and asked me for a spare tie because he hadn’t brought one. The reason he hadn’t brought one was because he had to sleep in a hotel all weekend and forgot to bring a tie along with the rest of his work clothes.
The reason he had to sleep in a hotel was because when he returned to his appartment at Friday night (at around 3am), he discovered a random guy sitting on his couch using his laptop. Imagine that for a second: You come home in a Friday night, tired as fuck from your time out and want to hit the bed ASAP, and you open the door to find an unknown person, sitting on your couch typing away at your laptop as if everything is normal.
Now if you think that bad enough, you haven’t heard anything. One would be inclined to ask: “How did this random person enter the appartment? Pick the lock? Break a window?” But no my friends, the reality in this case is stranger than fiction. This guy, who is incidentaly his next door neighbour, had apparently cut a hole in the wall big enough for him to get through, from his own appartment. The wall incidentally, is about 50cm thick.
So there’s this guy sitting on the couch smiling at him peacefully; not upset, not startled, just smiling as if everything is as it should be. MB understandably was mightily confused by this behaviour and initially thought that there was some perfectly reasonable explanation for all this. Perhaps someone broke in and this guy drove him off and was waiting for MB to come back? It was not until MB noticed the hole in the wall and the guy took responsibility for it that MB started going mental.
At some point, MB managed to finally ask him why he did all this. Inside his mind he was still expecting some kind of plausible rationale on why someone could possible tunnel into the next appartment and just sit there. The answer? Oh that’s just the cherry on top…
God told him to do it.
This story just doesn’t need any commentary does it?
So anyway, after that finally 10 policemen arrived (after being called by the girlfriend of a friend, since the call dispatcher did not speak English) and were just as dumbfounded as MB. I can just imagine them apologizing to MB and explaining that no, this sort of thing doesn’t happen. They hauled the intruder off to the station and finally MB was left alone…with his new hole.
This is the kind of story that you can use as a table story for years to come. Ah fun!
UPDATE:We’ve got photographic evidence over at the laughing wolf’s blog, just to convince you this is not a fictional story. Plus, he has a more humorous description than I do. Now if only he would learn how to link to permalinks and send me some proper trackbacks… 😛
Not only did I crash my bike but I managed to do it spectacularly as well.
Gawd this hasn’t happened to me since I was a teen. Yesterday as I was returning from work with my bicycle, I had one absolutely cinematic bicycle fall, the kinds of which that you just assume have been specifically prepared to make the stuntman have the most impressive drop.
I was on the large area in front of the Opera House and I have my umbrella hanged on the steering handle of the bike. The umbrella was one of those cheap plastic/aluminum ones where they have a hook at the end, so I had put it there to free my hands and I was holding it steady with my hand on top. In retrospect, such close proximity to the wheel was not the best place for an umbrella to be.
As these thing always do, the inevitable happened and at some point the tip of the umbrella managed to get too near to the spinning spokes and “sucked” in to the point where in jammed next to the fork. I didn’t really see that though. What I did see, after a short “I can see my house from up here” moment, was the ground coming up to meet me and say hello. I even did a satisfying grunt when I was ejected from my seat just because the jerk was so sudden.
I managed to land approx 1 meter away from my bike
Fortunately my years as a bumbling youth have conditioned me to fall as gracefully as possible and I managed to put my hands down first which meant that my right wrist took a nice strain, and then fell flat on my chest, which all things considered is not a bad falling location due to the amount of area the force can spread to. The initial pain was minimal and nothing was sprained or broken but I still have lingering pain on my wrist and chest now. Could have been worse I guess.
Of course such an event could not turn out without victims and in this case it was the unfortunate umbrella who dared to investigate the shiny-spinny thingies. After I managed to extricate it from its stuck location, I ended up with a vaguelly umbrella-shaped object which whished to become the greek letter Sigma “Σ” in the next life.
Once I had fallen, I turned around to shake my head at my misbehaving bicycle and noticed that a family around 50 meters ago had stopped to look at the undoubtedly humorous event. They didn’t look for long and moved along as soon as I got up. At this point some young guy approached me to ask (I guess) if I was ok. As I was a bit too stunned to decode his German at that point that is what I assume he was saying, although in retrospect I think he may have been saying “That was fucking awesome dude“. I couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say, so I said what was on the top of my mind at that moment:
So here I am, typing one handed because the other hand is holding a block of ice on my cheek to keep the swelling low (No, that’s the real reason. Now go and wash your brain). As you may have guessed by noticing my wonderfully blurred pic on the right, I have pulled out two of my wisdom teeth.
Yes, I wisened up at 27.
After I managed to go to the dentist 9 months later than what I wanted, I was convinced by Viola in coordination with the Dentist to get rid of these worthless pieces of bone. This was generally never high on my list of things to do as they never bothered me much but apparently, at least according to my dentist, they were partially to blame for the grinding of my teeth.
So I took the plunge and today my total sum of teeth has gone from thirty…errr…has been decreased by two.
Unfortunately for me, the roots of these damn things were horribly crooked and/or deep and/or many, leading one to need excessive force to pull out and the second a bit of an operation.
Now I really know what blood smells like, as well as how it feels to really hear a drill in the inside of your head as a piece of tooth root is being excavated, and I’m not joking…
Aaanyway, at least the good to come of this is that the dentist assumed that I would not be able to speak decently and also need some rest so he wrote me 3 days off. Which means the rest of the week is off for me. Kinda like a free and painful vacation.
So today I got an interesting email. It came from the legal department of a previous company I worked for (which wherewith will remain anonymous and called “the company”). Inside, in firm legal speech, I was informed that I was breaking Greek and international laws concerning anonymous enterprises and privacy. Therefore, I was ordered to remove all references to the company within 24 hours as well as any mention of software/hardware or people involved in a employee relationship with the company.
They also reserve the right to see on receiving damages resulting from the content of my site
My initial reaction was: WTF!!?
My surprise was mostly due to the fact that other than the company name (in a tag related to the post) and various generic information, such as a mentioning the operating system when I run into a computer problem, or mentioning the classic Greek ERP system when advertising the requirements of an IT position they were trying to fill (FFS! I even did that for free), I did not mention any names (specifically, I did not mention any names in a libelous fashion, but only in positive ways) and nor any other identification data.
Seriously, my worst post must have been one where I mentioned a christmas party and how boring it was. Or some random tech quotes (that every tech has) that had only my name on them. Oh and some pictures.
My impression is that apparently someone at the company saw some of my not-so-positive posts and recognized themselves in the anonymous mention, then got quite angry/insulted/whatever. Failing the option to fire me, they decided to bully me around.
So now I am pissed.
I have privatized my posts about them (even though, I really shouldn’t) until I know how much danger I am in. I know that Greece is notoriously behind in electronic rights (as exemplified by the Tsipropoulos case) and they may side with the company just because they don’t know what the hell is going on, but I want to think that International or European rights are a bit more advanced. But I just don’t know.
So I’m turning to you, my readers (yeah right I hear you say?). I want to ask any of you, especially those of you with legal background and especially in Greece, if I should worry or not and if the following are considered intellectual property or libel.
Mentioning the name of the company I used to work for and my position there.
Mentioning specifics of the company (such as saying that they were using such and such OS, or this program or whatnot). Not that I did before, but I’d like to know…
Pictures of me and other company stuff in events
Mentioning of Operating system used in an event (such as when creating a guide on how I fixed a computer). Can I say something like: “So when the Vista pc died, I had to replace the harddisk and reinstall SAP”. Can they actually consider this intellectual property?
Can I mention doing unpaid overtime? Am I allowed to complain about my treatment? Can I mention my salary? How about salaries of other people that used to work in there? What does the law allow me?
Can I rant on the incompetence of users without mentioning names. Does the fact that they work in the company make my rant a libel?
Can I mention the incompetence of management?
If I do not mention IP address’ or specific dns/netbios names, is it a violation of the company’s IP or security to mention a router or other piece of hardware vaguely? (i.e. “The router at Tsimiski”)
So I would really appreciate anyone’s advice on this, as it came out of nowhere and caught me unprepared. I do not like to be bullied and this kind stuff really gets me angry. Before I did not care about the company, hell, I even went beyond the call of duty too many times with them but this is preposterous and I would like to fight back.
So I was at the lunch break with some of the other Greeks at work and I had ordered the chiken with rice (or as we greeks joked: Πούστη με Κινέζο). All was going well until at some unexpected moment an ambush herb (or somesuch) got in my mouth. The only thing I realised was a very salty taste kind-of “explode” in my mouth but I did not think much about it. I swallowed.
Three minutes later I started feeling a a reaction in my stomach. It started getting worse by the second so I decided to visit the toiled. I ended up springing towards it as I started heaving before I took three steps. Inside I pretty much puked my guts out (almost choking in the process) while the other worried Greeks were calling security and an ambulance. I stopped throwing up as blood started coming out.
I was taken in the back to relax and I informed the team leader on what happened. He excused me the rest of the day while the medics arrived and started making tests. In the end they decided to check me in the hospital to take some blood and do some tests just in case.
In the end, I ended staying in the hospital for 3 very boring hours. I was checked out at around 4 pm at which point I visited the bank to take my stuff and go home. I decided to skip german lessons for today 🙁
Meh. At least it wasn’t as bad as the last time when I ate fish with feta cheese and as a dessert, strawberries with creme…oh how fun that was :S
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