Instead of going political once again, and obsessing too much on the upsetting win of one of the nastiest constant liars in the US political sphere preparing to take over the nuclear soccer ball, or whatever, as well as whether Merkel meant it with the no Leader of the Free World for us*, or not... I'd rather report some new sensations of the physical world. Or conjecture on.

No, not sensations of the trump'eting kind. Bodily interactions with the everyday physical world, rather.

The other day, about a forthnight ago, I realised, that if I take a really hot bath in early winter, and most of my body is beneath the surface, but the parts of my legs around my knees aren't, my knees give off a thin smoke. Of their own! I.e. my legs were at an angle, knees up, the actual bath water not steaming too much and I saw... Okay, I knew within a second the "smoke" had to be just more steam, but the child in me - yes, still present after all dese long done years! - was impressed.

I'm the man with the occasional smokin' legs!

Today, after a bad dip into a lot-of-crazy-coughing 'flu for about a week, I realised that my food intake during sick leaves tends to be the exact thing I should be going for, when I'm not sick: Healthier (less finished food, more fruit, more tea than bottled water) and less of it. Only once I feel better, like now, do old unhealthy appetites return (mostly carbohydrates & salt - I love most salty stuff).

So I wondered: Was it only the diminished hunger caused by i.a. fever that had that effect? Could it be in part due to the often-closed nose, i.e. partial loss of smell?

Maybe I could do a lot for an effective new life diet, if I stoppered up my nose for one or more days each week...?

Well, have a good festive month!

I'm ending a brief sojourn to Düsseldorf, the capital of my home state, North-Rhine Westfalia, traditionally catholic-conservative as well as a mainstay for Germany's unions & social-Democrat workers

I can't remember ever having been here, but must have been as a child; when my parents were young, in the late 60's, they apparently used to drive here a few times a year to do "window shopping".

They probably chose to visit the one grand "Prachtstraße" (street of great splendour) the city seems to have to offer: Königsallee, usually abbreviated to "Kö" - a broad, light street with wide pavements and middle isle strip of mostly green... It mainly offers s lot of hot (sic) couture places of trade (like the one pictured - note the black-laquered cat), with appended tightish street cafés. There's also at least one beautiful 4-storey old building, copper-roofed, with big stone faces of lions, on one side, as well as an unfortunately big green sign "kaufhof", which probably lights up at night (aaaarrgh!), on top.

The rest of the small bit of the inner city I saw on my two-hourly excursion, from the central railway station to the Kö, was pretty dead, dirty & dingy. There was even an old Beate Uhse shop near the station - I felt transported to the 80's. One bright side, here & on-Kö: You get to see a lot of Asian faces - Chinese, if I picked up bits of spoken words correctly...

T.b.d.

The other day I was waiting in a cinema, dressed in a dinner jacket and sporting a nifty umbrella - and the person I was waiting for had forgotten our meeting. I'd been invited to something like a premiere and was allowed to bring one guest along.

When I phoned the intended guest 5 minutes after the arranged time (which for once had to be kept absolutely, since there was an i.d. check queue we had to be at before the film began), they were sitting in a good mood at their desk. I was flabbergasted. Too hectically, probably, I said, i.a.:

I meant that perhaps 5% as it was said. It was just shorter to say than "You've forgotten your appointment with me". That's what I really meant to transport.

I didn't give it much thought, although I did wonder when hearing nothing more of the non-attendee for the next 36 hours or so. In fact, I thought that a bit heartless.

When an SMS came along, apologising for badly seating me (German idiom for not having turned up), due to time pressure and exhaustion, etc., I thought I'd just mention in a return SMS that the behaviour on the phone indicated that I'd simply been forgotten. Also to suggest a technical solution how I could help prevent this in future (it has happened a few times before, you see).

Unfortunately I began the SMS with the same sentence as the highlighted one above, this time in writing.

Again, I actually wanted to communicate the forgetting more than the "me". But, maybe since SMS texts need to be short, and because the brain likes repeating things it already "knows", I again chose the brief version.

Now a rather angry SMS came along from the other side, preaching that it hadn't been "m e" that had been "f o r g o t t e n", and that I shouldn't always take things personally. Of course, I shot back a too-dry defensive SMS.

Only (days) later, I realised we'd probably been "arguing" off-target, in parallel, constantly misunderstanding each other. I was set on addressing the other's (constant) forgetting; the other person's focus was on my double "me" - also probably explaining the 36 hours. Having forgotten that I'd gotten dressed up because they'd said that was how they would come.

But "dressed down" communication like brief phone calls and SMS texts aren't really designed for better understanding and less (mis)interpretation at all. So why don't we - yes, me, too! - learn to slow down during a crisis, and not use some macho tight-lipped Dirty Harry mode to transport important negotiation data?

I wonder if that's the reason Twitter has become such a source for storms of public indignation and even hysteria. Of course also a source preferred by ISIL.

We know - even if we may ignore - Slow Food. Let's also bring in more Slow Talk. E.g. in person, seated, in a neutral place. Considered communication, longer than 140 or 160 characters at a time, to de-escalate crises.

Even better (provided you survive the fight): Write a snail-mailed letter!