Back..

Its good to be home again. Not that I didnt have a great time in Europe, but the more I travel, the more I look forward to coming back home to the place where I can simply relax in my own space. Now, it would just be nice if Lili could join me. :)

First, click on the Prague engagement links again, I was finally able to upload all of those pics, but I haven't had the time to go through and edit them. I will be uploading and marking the pics in the next week, so you know what your looking at.

The trip home was shitty, and I am going to tell you that you should not fly delta internationally or across the country. They suck. I will never knowingly fly with them ever again. I was laid over in Atlanta for 8 hours, all their flights were overbooked by 10 people and they wouldnt reroute through different cities to make the pressure lessen. Stupid people who just didn't care. It was simillar going out to Germany as well.
For 545.00 roundtrip, I guess I can't really complain all that much...

More sooner than later. Read more!

Prague Engagement!!!

Prague Engagement!!!

**CLICK ON THE PIC**

The one time that I have a ton of pics to upload and send, the google tool is not working. So, here are the pictures that I was able to get loaded... As you might know, Lili and I got engaged yesterday, overlooking the beautiful skyline of Prague. Needless to say, we are enjoying our time together. This will be the last update until I get back as there is a ton of stuff to do before I leave on Sunday. We are leaving Prague today and headed back to Cologne. Just three more days on this whirlwind trip....
Crazy. Read more!

Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp

Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp

These pictures are a lot more somber than the other ones. They were taken at Sachensenhausen Camp, on the outskirts of Berlin. It was built by prisoners of another, more harsh concentration camp that was located in Bavaria. Prisoners were made to travel here to this camp and build it. This was the primary location of where Himmler was posted out of. There were a ton of experiments that went on here using prisoners and it was the main area where people were held that were political opponents to the third reich. They estimate that more than 50,000 people were killed here and there remains are simply scattered throughout the grounds.
The weather was quite horrible at the time, so there is a limited number of photos. Read more!

Berlin Day Two

These shots are from our second day in Berlin. Read more!

Berlin pics Part One

Berlin Day One

As per usual, click on the picture above and it will connect you to the google photos site, where you can view all of the photos from the trip.
We have arrived in Prague last night, another spectacular city in Europe. We were in Dresdan yesterday, which was the city that was hit the hardest by the allies in WWII. I will upload some great photos from there as soon as I can, but for now, enjoy all that we got to see in Berlin, which actually is only a fraction of all that there is to see in Berlin. Read more!

In Berlin

We arrived in Berlin in the afternoon yesterday, via Lili's little yellow Renault. The drive from Koln to Berlin took about six hours, two of which I drove on the famous Autobahn speedway. I was a little unnerved at the driving habits of the Germans at first, but I think most of that was directly attributed to the looseness of the steering in the car. I am not used to such flexibility in the steering, which made for a few nervous moments behind the wheel.
The cars move at a good click, and they pay attention to the policy which used to exist in the states that the far left hand side is the speeding and passing lane and the two right lanes are for more traffic volumes. This makes things much easier to handle. You really have to pay attention when moving in and out of the speed lane as cars can be traveling upwards of 200kg a hour... but even if you do seem to make a mistake, the people don't give you the finger or are aggressive in any way, they may simply give a courtesy honk and move on...
As we arrived in Berlin, our moods improved greatly. The city itself is by far the biggest that we have been in thus far. I am not even sure what part of town we are staying in, but its a hostel, which is still 50 bucks a night for a private room. The area looks a bit dodgy, but then again, most of the town looks dodgy, but its Berlin! I don't really expect to not see many parts of town that don't have a slightly rundown look to them. Graffiti is a major problem all over Germany and I wonder why they don't prosecute these people for their "art". People need to begin to speak out against this shit, but Lili tells me that they do try to do what they can, but they are sneaky fuckers!! (I should also mention that it was a problem in Holland as well, and I expect to see it in Prague.) I remember that the Berlin wall, when it was brought down years ago, it was also covered in graffiti as well.
The hostel is located inside of an old former factory it would seem, called Die Fabrik. I am not sure if I love it just yet, but it seems semi quiet, but the silence is almost a bit weird.
I have a lot of thoughts of the war these days. Faint echoes from the courtyard of men shouting in German make me think of that horrible time in European history. Today we will make our way to Checkpoint Charlie and possibly to the concentration camp where Anne Frank was murdered. We are talking about going to Auschwitz, but I think that Dresdan is a more viable option. Dresdan has always had a lot of meaning for me as it is where Slaughter Haus 5 is set...
So it goes.... Read more!

Dave and Tim Köln EWerk

Here are the pictures from last nights show with Dave and Tim. Check out www.youtube.com/hoggenstein
for the videos, which I am trying to post as time allows. Currently, there are thee great versions online and ready for your consumption.

Dave and Tim Koln EWerk

Read more!

Amsterdam

Well, Amsterdam was just awesome.
Stories and stuff are to follow...
For now, here are the pics for you to enjoy. Simply click on the pic to see all of the pics from Amsterdam.

Cheers....

Amsterdam

Read more!

Germany Part 1

Clink on this link to be taken to the picture gallery of the European vacation!!!
We are off to Amsterdam tommorow for three daze.... Read more!

The travelling is always the hardest part...

5:14pm Happy Hour, JFK
March 7, 2007
Journal entry number one.. I am here at JFK, my phone isn’t working because my sister had it shut off because she doesn’t want to have to worry about roaming charges, even though she owes me fifty bucks. Sad, really, but the last thing that I want to do it further complicate our relationship by bringing up yet another moment of disappointment. She has had a lot of them lately and yet her faults seem to be directly attributed to my faults.
As you can probably tell, I am not in the best of sprits for starting out my vacation. I always find it especially weird to be in these airports, people watching. It sort of makes me sad at the sight of the human race-the last flight was anything but pleasant… This is what airtravel is going to be like for the next yet to be determined chapter. It’s the worst—it almost seems anti travel the way that they handle things—I would love to visit so many places, but flying to the places just sucks. I can remember not so long when it wasn’t like this, when it didn’t seems like everyone in the entire world wasn’t travelling. Now, you get on and the flights are full, they feed you fucking crackers and call it good. Totally unacceptable, but what are you going to do?
But anyway, this is the thing. Its not about this part, its about the other side. Its about my arrival in Germany, its about relaxing and chilling out. It just goes to show that in reality I need to move on with my life, get the fuck out of the states and see what its like on the other side. I am crazy looking forward to seeing Lili and make things happen again, its been so tough for her, and difficult for me as well, but at the same token I have noticed that I have this ability to compartmentalize my feelings much more. A that I know is that I am a smart guy and I have had seen more success from my time abroad than my time in the states, so I am not sure.
This is a rather stressful trip as well, one that I am looking forward to the challenges, but at the same time, I am up for the challenges that lie ahead… (more on that later) FUCK, if I sit and think about it for a minute, I really start to think about how much I have on my plate for the next chapter and how I need to balance it all… but, at the same time, this latest journey is going to be one that is totally about perspective.
General vibe: Nervous and Anger. My sister has still not even acknowledged what is going on and she knows. Sad.
1:45 Business Class Air France
Fuck.
So, the flight from JFK to Paris was three hours late in taking off. Perhaps this could have been mitigated if we had not already loaded the plane to capacity and then some kid gets an allergic reaction because he ate a peanut. As a little heads up from me to you, when a passenger gets on a plane and then gets off, his luggage has to go with him (including what is checked). So, somewhere, some kid owes me 3 hours, not only that, he owes about 335 people three hours.
I am not a small man, I have come to terms with it, except when I fly. Never do a feel like I need to enter a weight loss program more than when I have to squeeze into one of those tight fitting seats. This time was a particular challenge as I seemed to have developed a pocket of fat which seemed to rub perfectly with the oncall oh shit button. Twice during my slumber I was awakened with that ever so not meant to be invasive tap, tap tap.
“Sir, did you need anything?”
No, but perhaps my fat deposit does. Do you have a deep fried twinkie? Perhaps a nice peanut butter and banana sandwich?
Friday noon.
I arrived six hours later than anticipated, due to the issues discussed in the previous entries. This turned out to be just fine as I was eventually able to reach Lili in Paris and let her know what had happened. Seeing her on the other side of the baggage claim made all the anxieties of the last weeks go.
Germany: Interesting. From the moment that we left the confines of the baggage claim and entered the autobahn, my American box that we all seem to live in began to break itself down. I looked out of the window at all of the different cars that surrounded us—a plethora of Mercedes and BMW’s that I had never seen before, along with a wide variety of science convention protypes that will more than likely never be seen in America.
Lili was nothing short of amazing, as she always is. As she was weaving in and out of the traffic, our eyes caught the occasional gaze of one another. What an exciting moment these times of my life are. Exciting things are coming for sure.
We came home and took a nap, curled tightly against each other and I passed out. Upon waking, we picked her mother up from the train station and went to dinner, which I took a pic of the pub. We had a couple of beers, breaking the ice and the language barrier at the same time. Dinner was wonderful, some of the best food I have had in quite some time—and certainly the best I have had in a bar in ages.
I want to apologize if the beginning of this journal has no flow in it—I am still very tired and a bit rushed. More to come. Read more!

Hogg is in Seattle *last night

So, my mom is out of surgery... and I am about 15 hours away from leaving for Germany. I can't begin to put down in words the kinds of things I have gone through in the last months without Lili here, there simply hasnt been enough time but to do anything and work, work, work. But the time has paid off and I am not preparing for a three week journey.
Here is the itenerary:
Arrive Thursday morning, Dusseldorph. I arrive, Lili picks me up, the love story continues. We are in Koln most of the week, hitting a football match on Friday or Saturday, then its off to Amsterdam for the weekend, heading into the week.
Then back Tuesday for Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds in Koln.
Then, by next weekend, we make our way to Berlin, Nuremburg and finally to Prague.
Stay tuned, there are some major developments being put into motion... Read more!

China locks up online "addicts" for harsh rehab

China locks up online "addicts" for harsh rehab
By Ariana Eunjung Cha

The Washington Post

He Fang, 22, says incessant online gaming hurt his grades. He says he's been changed by his stay at the military-run clinic at Daxing, one of eight such Chinese facilities to treat Internet addiction.

DAXING, China — Sun Jiting spends his days locked behind metal bars in this military-run installation, put there by his parents. The 17-year-old high-school student is not allowed to communicate with friends back home, and his only companions are psychologists, nurses and other patients. Each morning at 6:30, he is jolted awake by a soldier in fatigues shouting, "This is for your own good!"

Sun's offense: Internet addiction.

Alarmed by a survey that found nearly 14 percent of teens in China are vulnerable to becoming addicted to the Internet, the Chinese government has launched a nationwide campaign to stamp out what the Communist Youth League calls "a grave social problem" that threatens the nation.

Few countries have been as effective historically in fighting drug and alcohol addiction as China, which has been lauded for its successes, as well as criticized for harsh techniques.

Now the country is turning its attention to fighting another, supposed addiction — one that has been blamed in the state-run media for a slaying over virtual property earned in an online game, for a string of suicides and for the failure of youths in their studies.

The Chinese government in recent months has joined South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam in taking measures to try to limit the time teens spend online. It has passed regulations banning youths from Internet cafes and has implemented control programs that kick teens off networked games after five hours.

There's a global controversy over whether heavy Internet use should be defined as a mental disorder, with some psychologists, including a handful in the U.S., arguing it should be. Backers of the notion say the addiction can be crippling, leading people to neglect work, school and social lives.

But no country has gone quite as far as China in embracing the theory and mounting a public crusade against Internet addiction.

To skeptics, the campaign dovetails a bit too nicely with China's broader effort to control what its citizens can see on the Internet. The Communist government runs a massive program that limits Web access, censors sites and seeks to control online political dissent. Internet companies such as Google have come under heavy criticism abroad for going along with China's demands.

In the Internet-addiction campaign, the government is helping to pay for eight in-patient rehabilitation clinics across the country.

The clinic in Daxing, a suburb of Beijing, the capital, is the oldest and largest, with 60 patients on a normal day and as many as 280 during peak periods. Few of the patients, who range in age from 12 to 24, are here willingly. Most have been forced to come by their parents, who are paying upward of $1,300 a month — about 10 times the average salary in China — for the treatment.

Led by Tao Ran, a military researcher who built his career by treating heroin addicts, the clinic uses a tough-love approach that includes counseling, military discipline, drugs, hypnosis and mild electric shocks.

Tao said the clinic is based on the idea that there are many similarities between his current patients and those he had in the past.

In terms of withdrawal: "If you let someone go online and then he can't go online, you may see a physical reaction, just like someone coming off drugs." And in terms of resistance: "Today you go half an hour, and the next day you need 45 minutes. It's like starting with drinking one glass and then needing half a bottle to feel the same way."

Located on an army training base, the Internet-addiction clinic is distinct from the other buildings on campus because of the metal grates and padlocks on every door and the bars on every window.

On the first level are 10 locked treatment rooms geared toward treating teen patients suffering from disturbed sleep, lack of motivation, aggression, depression and other problems. Unlike the rest of the building, which is painted in blues and grays and kept cold to keep the teens alert, these rooms are sunny and warm.

Inside Room No. 8 are toys and other figurines that the teens can play with while psychologists watch. Room 10 contains rows of fake machine guns that patients use for role-play scenarios that are supposed to bridge the virtual world with the real one.

Room No. 4 is made up to look like home, with rattan furniture and fake flowers, to provide a comfortable place for counselors to talk to the teens. Before meeting with a patient, one counselor swapped her olive-hued military uniform for a motherly cardigan and plaid skirt.

Among the milder cases are those of Yu Bo, 21, from Inner Mongolia, and Li Yanjiang, 15, from Hebei province. Both said they used to spend four to five hours a week online and their daily lives weren't affected, but that their parents wanted them to cut their computer usage to zero so they could study. Yu said he agreed to come because he wanted to train himself. Li said it was because he just wanted to "get away from my parents."

Perceived as a more serious case is that of He Fang, 22, a college student from the western region of Xinjiang. The business-administration major said his grades tanked when he started playing online games several hours a night. The clinic "has mainly helped me change the way I think," he said. "It's not about getting away from pressure but facing it and dealing with it."

Before Sun, the 17-year-old, who is from the city of Cangzhou, checked into the clinic about a month ago, he said, he was sometimes online playing games for 15 hours nonstop. "My life was not routine — day and night I was messed up," he said.

Since he's been there, Sun said, he's decided to finish high school, attend college and then work at a private company. With the help of a counselor, he's mapped out a life plan from now until he's 84.

No one is comfortable talking about the third floor of the clinic, where serious cases — usually two or three at a time — are housed. Most have been addicted to the Internet for five or more years, Tao said, are severely depressed and refuse counseling. One sliced his wrists but survived. These teens are under 24-hour supervision.

Tao said he believes 70 percent of the teens, after one to three months of treatment, will go home and lead normal lives, but he's less optimistic about the third-floor patients. "Their souls are gone to the online world," he said.

Guo Tiejun, a school headmaster turned psychologist who runs an Internet-addiction research center in Shanghai, said the military-run clinic goes too far in treating Internet addicts like alcohol and drug addicts.

He said he has treated several former patients of the Daxing clinic and that one mother told him it was simply "suffering for a month" that did not help her son. Guo said he believes the root of the problem is loneliness and that the most effective treatment is to treat the teens "like friends."

"Our conclusion is that kids who get addicted in society have some kind of disability or weakness. They can't make friends, can't fulfill their desire of social communication, so they go online," Guo said.

Guo is especially critical of the use of medications — which include antidepressants, anti-psychotics and a variety of other pills and intravenous drips — for Internet addiction because, he said, that approach treats symptoms, not causes.

Tao and his team of 15 doctors and nurses defended the treatment methods. He said that while some clinics depend wholly on medications, only one out of five patients at the Daxing clinic receive prescription drugs. Tao did agree with Guo that Internet addiction is usually an expression of deeper psychological problems.

"We use these medicines to give them happiness," Tao said, "so they no longer need to go on the Internet to be happy."

Still, for all the high-tech treatments available at the clinic, the one Sun says helped him most was talking. He looks forward to returning to school and getting on with his life.

The first task on his agenda when he gets home: get online. He needs to tell his worried Internet friends where he was these past few weeks. Read more!

German Countdown

Germany Trip has been confirmed.
March 7th through the 26th.
Mostly going to see Lili, but as of right now, two side events are scheduled.
Dave Matthews live in Koln on the 12th of March
Nine Inch Nails on the 13th of March.
So, all in all, its looking to be an exciting trip just from the live concert experience.
If anyone has any ideas, please feel free to leave a comment. We are planning to go and tour the castles of the North and touring some of the Nazi sites inside of Germany. We have also planned to perhaps make a journey to either the Netherlands or perhaps Prague, but this is largely dependant upon cheap flights.

The total cost of the airline ticket is 563.00 round trip on Delta! A good price, but not the best airline. The good news is that they are partners with my mileage plan! Read more!

LONG TIME.

Again, I find myself writing to explain why I havent written.
Things are crazy right now, but I am hoping to put an end to that in the near future. Writing is very important to me and keeping this thing going is a part of that importance.
I have had to spend much more time on the computer getting it to the point where I can really start working on the materials has been a struggle, but in the end the housecleaning I have been doing will aid the process much better once that time comes.
I have upgraded to Vista and it is working quite well. There have been a few major glitches which I have now managed to fix. The other project that has been taking up a lot of my time is arranging music and other media related things in a format which is easy to catalog and access. I tend to listen to a lot of music and have so much of it that if it isnt catalouged correctly, it is a nightmare.

SO, that's where we are. Read more!

Happy new Year!! 2007

Well, another year has passed, the 33rd year of my life.
So many things happened in the last year that my mind is still reeling from all that took place.
Some notable moments:
1. Spending half of the year mostly in China, but also exploring Lao, Cambodia and Thailand.
2. Bangkok
3. Meeting the love of my life, Lilifer Behrends, of Germany in Beijing while being visited by Billy and Virgia Bryant of Yellowstone Park fame.
4. Coming back to the United States and finding a contract job with Microsoft which will hopefully allow me to get ahead in the rat race and save enough for the possibility of an upcoming wedding.
5. Lili visiting Seattle while I am starting to get everything in order.
6. Work has begun on what will be my first book. (www.notsoredchina.blogspot.com)

Most of these things are in direct relation to my time in China. I think it represented a huge turning point in the way I view certain things, but time will tell.

The plan for 2007?
For the most part-- working.
This contract is hourly based with overtime, which allows for plenty of money to be made and there are lots of bills out there that need to be paid. These two things go hand in hand.
In my sparetime, I will be working on the 1st draft of the book and saving up for my visit to Germany in March to see Lili. From there, we shall see.
So for now, a very merry new Year to you all. Read more!

Merry Christmas!

First off, I hope all of you are having a Merry Christmas!
I am at work right now, earning lots of cash for working. The only downfall is that they have forgotten to order the Christmas Dinner, which is crap, but I am not surprised.

If youre looking at this site for the first time, please excuse the mess!
I am currently in the process of transistioning all of the content that has to do with China into another part to begin the tedious process of editing for a book which I have always dreamed of putting together. Countless hours of writing and taking in a year in China is the premise of what the book is going to be about--and I have given myself the next six months to get everything together in a first draft.

Anyway, please enjoy and make comments as needed. Read more!

Nature, the ultimate rage against the machine.

All I can say is wow.
Since coming back from China, I have been continually amazed how we live here, especially when we as a society are faced with a dilemma, which is much the case now here in Seattle.
For those of you who don't know, Seattle was whacked for the second time this season, but this one with an intensity that none of us has seen in sometime. Microsoft lost of all its power in the Seattle area and was unable to function. I work for the MSN OPS Center, which is the certralized hub of all issues related to the Microsoft Network. We were relocated to another site in South Seattle because the generator power at MS was not enough to handle the routers and other equiptment that are essential to our core business.
All of it at the mercy of mother nature.
Its hard to not think about everything that the country has and how little response time we have when it comes to disaster. Its also not difficult to think about Katrina and the lack of response of that and contrast it to this--where its all hands on deck and people working around the clock to make a difference. Everyday progress is made and continues to be made until the power is restored and people are on their way back to normality.
Then, there is China, where if a tragidy occurs, the government either downplays the issues or they cover it up.
Anyway, thats my side. Read more!

So, this is the way that it works.




Days usually begin preciesly at 830 in the morning.
I sit up, recall waiting for the moment for quite some time
nod a few times
and begin my day.



At least four days out
the standard seven in the same way
I get up and move closer
to my death




these days theres no such thing as silence
and no time to get out there and write something so big, so immense that it makes you think....




If I could change the world
Just stop watching TV
and youll have time to read
make change
and propose a soloution to all this
choas.


There was a choice that you just happen to make at some point. When I came back from college, it was finally done. I had put in my time and made it a good time, in both senses of the word. Now, I wanted to do something with it. Not so much make money, but get involved in something where you are helping to progress someone in society. Now when I say that, it might sound wierd, but its not.
This is how I fell into Chinas grasp. Read more!

Content added to youtube.

I also have uploaded some utube content....
Search for it at www.youtube.com under the name hoggenstein.
Although I am responsible for the content, I am warning you that you might not find it funny. There will be many more uploaded in the coming days, so please check back. I am hoping that there is a little fun for everyone. Read more!

Anticipated completion date is set for 05/25/2007

So, this evening I decided to stay home and begin to organize my thoughts and actions around finally sitting down to begin putting all of the information needed to write this book about China. I spoke to a publisher *who will not be named, so dont ask*, and they said that the want to see a complete first draft on the book in 6 months.
If they like it, then we proceed to another draft. We are aiming for something published by this time next year--if I can finish the first draft.
So, for those of you check this thing on occasion, heres the deal....

I am going to turn this into a journal again, where I check in and do a few warmups to get into the write state of mind. I will update on progress, etc.

I have uploaded a bunch of content to youtube.com as well of most of my adventures in China. Some of them are totallz dull, but I dont have video editing software, so try to struggle through a couple of them and let me know what you think... You can search them by my username, which is Hoggenstein.

Ok, well, much time has been taken tonight, it nearly 2am and I must get some sleep in before spending yet more time infront of this thing, chasing a dream.

--talk soon. Read more!