An American Expat in Deutschland

Say it ain’t so, Joe!

by Christina Geyer on September 4, 2006

Well, Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, was killed today by a stingray. Little known fact: I ALMOST applied for the second season of Survivor (the one where they killed a pig and one guy fell in the fire). I thought - a PhD student in Statistics at Duke is a shoe in! I actually had gone so far as to fill out the application. They unfortunately required a video submission as well and I was unable to locate a video camera for such a purpose, so I never sent in the app. So alas, it wasn’t to be, but I’m reminded today that one question on the application was something along the lines of, “If you were stuck on a deserted island with one person, who would you want it to be?” and I picked Steve Irwin, since I figured he’d know how to survive and would be an amusing companion at the same time.

I only had to wait until 1.5 hours after my appointment (2 hours total) to be seen at the doctor’s this morning. My appointment was at 8am (the first appointment of the day) and I figured if I got there at 7:30am I’d be first in line (first come, first served is big in doctors offices, at least here in the east). Boy was I wrong! I get there half an hour before the doctor officially opens and the waiting room was completely full. So, if there is a next time at this doctor, I guess I need to show up an hour early. Rainer says that when he becomes a professor, he’ll be a Beampter, and we’ll have to get private health insurance, and then I will get ushered in and given the royal treatment, especially if we end up in the west (the east is still a bit ‘communist’ about this sort of stuff). Strange that government employees have to have private insurance, but his professor friends confirmed this, so, who knows? It’s unfair to all those other folks at the doctors office, but will be cool for me.

Funny side note: this morning on the radio they played an Indian version of Snow’s song Informer. Whatever happened to Snow anyway?