Tag: Deutschland

  • Naturpark Barnim

    Some pictures from a hiking trip with Basia in Naturpark Barnim last year.

  • Coworking near Moritzplatz

    Coworking near Moritzplatz

    We found an exciting new spot to work from.

  • Vaccine

    I have 100% iron clad scientific proof that it is far worse to get the COVID-19 vaccine than to catch COVID-19 …

    Months ago I noticed my apartment was overheated, which was a bit annoying. I was sweating a lot. Since it was so hot and I was feeling a bit drained of energy, I didn’t go outside for a couple of days and just spent my time YouTube’ing rabbit videos and working as per normal. Eventually I went for a walk outside though, and realised that it wasn’t hot outside at all, it was only my apartment. Then I realised I was sweating even though it was cold. I seemed to have a mild fever, so I went home. Was I being paranoid? I went to sleep, and when I woke up I felt fine. No problems. I chalked this experience up as COVID-19 paranoia and continued with life. But a month later I was thinking back to this, and decided to order a new antibody testing kit just to confirm (I had already used one which had come back negative). But my experiences with stabbing myself the previous time were … suboptimal, so I procrastinated on using the test kit.

    Eventually, my friend Craig, with a smile on his face, offered to stab me. So I held out my thumb and he stabbed my thumb, which hurt like heck but failed to give any more than a single darned drop. My thumb still feels a bit weird to this day; it tingles in the spot where he stabbed me.

    Fast forward until a couple of weeks ago, and out of the blue I got my appointment for the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine with a cardiologist. For some bizarre reason, vaccinations in Germany are only allowed to be given by medical doctors. So every obscure doctor under the sun is giving vaccines here, hence I ended up at a cardiologist; some middle aged people have been visiting pediatricians lol.

    But I of course still had the antibody test kit sitting there, so I looked up advice online on how to bleed enough blood, and they all recommended NEVER using your thumb. I did a bunch of exercises to promote blood flow, then stabbed myself in my ring finger and out flowed blood which I squeezed into a little plastic tube.

    I took my little tube along to my vaccination appointment. After many hours of hanging around in the cramped cardiologists office with all the elderly people there for their heart appointments, and filling out the same long winded paper forms multiple times because they kept losing them, I was seen by the doctor who spent about 30 seconds to inject me and sent me on my way πŸ™‚ On my way back from my vaccination appointment, I mailed my blood sample to the antibody testing lab for analysis.

    I didn’t notice any significant effects from the vaccine, until waking up in the middle of the night and realising I wasn’t feeling too well. I made it to my daily 8:30am meeting, but decided to have a nap before continuing with work. I didn’t move from my bed until 5:00pm when I really needed to pee. I then took most of the next day off work and tried to work the day after, but I don’t think I got a lot done. That darn vaccine knocked me on my arse for three days. It was even worse than when I had the chickenpox vaccine as an adult, which was pretty bad.

    After a couple of weeks, I received an email from the testing lab. They had detected the presence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in my blood! They were in low levels, but they were present. I had indeed had COVID-19 and it was recent, because the previous antibody test I’d run showed the presence of no antibodies.

    So in conclusion, I barely noticed I had COVID-19, but the damned vaccine knocked me on my arse for three days. The COVID-19 vaccine was even worse than when I had the chickenpox vaccine as an adult.

    PS: This post was obviously written in jest. Vaccinations are recommended for a reason and it’s not generally for your benefit, but for society as a whole. And get all your other vaccinations too, not just COVID-19 πŸ˜‰

  • Burger in the park

    Part of me is pissed off that I have to eat this burger in the park with snow falling down around me. Part of me is enjoying that I was the only one willing to sit in the park eating my burger with snow falling down around me.

  • Briese swamp hike

    Basia and I headed out for a group hike to the Briese swamp area, just out of Berlin. We had an awesome hike through the swamp πŸ™‚

  • Neues Museum in Berlin

    Visiting the Neues Museum in Berlin with Charlotta πŸ™‚ The skull is one of the very earliest preserved homo sapien skulls.

     

  • Brandenburg an der Havel

    Mo, Jacob, myself and Jenny went on a cycling trip from Brandenburg an der Havel to Potsdam. Lunch consisted on an amazing ice cream sundae πŸ™‚

  • Madhvi marathon

    Madhvi and I celebrating after completing the final leg of the Madhvi marathon (12 km).