Helga's Back

 Hello!  It is I, Helga.  I have not for a long time added to the blog of my father, so I would like to do this.  I am, of course, fluent in French and German (I also have a smattering of Italian), but my English is a little, how you say it, “rusty,” so I will use this opportunity to practice my English.

What is new in my family?  Well, the most vexing question of today is this: Does my dad look like a famous professor at Harvard, where students go to become incredibly wealthy internet entrepreneurs (this means in English “people who start their own business and then buy up everyone else’s business”), or does he look like a graduate of the University of Guelph, where students go to become knowledgeable about fertilizers and husbandry?  Many of our relatives have “weighed in” (metaphysically speaking) to this debate.  I don’t really care because in my future career as dancer/supermodel/Jeopardy contestant, it will only be important for my dad to look like me.  You be the judge: 

Looks like my dad?  I don’t think so.

My dad looks as good as me?  For sure!

 

Heinrich, stop biting!  It is not seemly for future dancers/supermodels/Jeopardy contestants to have bite marks on their otherwise flawless skin.  And get a haircut!  I have had my hair cut several times and it just keeps growing back.  You will not lose your hair like our father did because he did not get the right genes, which were mistakenly given to our Uncle Tom.

What else is new?  Well, I used to want to be a princess but since my grandmère Lisa has been reading to me about the Princess in Black, I have decided that being a princess is way too much work.  Always with the monsters that eat the goats!  Why does she not move to a safer neighborhood, like my cousin Zoe and my cousin Maya, who are moving to Oakridge?  There are very few monsters in Oakridge, outside of the ones who attend Oakridge Secondary School.  And the Princess in Black has to ride on a horse.  In Germany we have Audis and Mercedes and BMWs (not Volkswagens—those are for the serfs); we do not ride on horses.

In my class at school, I am often mistaken for American.  This is more horrible than being on a horse.  Everyone knows that Americans are crazy and virus-ridden.  (This does not mean that they ride on the viruses like on the horses.  English is a weird language.)  Every night I am made to promise my parents not to move to America when I am a famous dancer/supermodel/Jeopardy contestant.  There are monsters in America.  Who would ever move there?  Better that Heinrich bites me than that I move to America.  Perhaps I will move to Oakridge, where my cousin Zoe and my cousin Maya are going.  I would have a lot to teach them about being a dancer or supermodel, but not a Jeopardy contestant because I don’t need that kind of competition.

Grandpère Mike says that I should not be a “smart aleck” because then people will not like me so much.  However, being a smart aleck will be useful when I am bantering with Ken Jennings after he replaces Alex.  Also, it will make me a very good host of Der Schwächste fliegt!  I can use my smart aleck look and say, “Da wollen wir doch mal sehen, wer unsere kostbare Studioluft lang genug weggeatmet hat!”  I will wear the Princess in Black outfit and instead of chasing monsters I will chase the Schwächste off the stage.  What fun, is it not so?  (Excuse my French.)

 

Der Schwächste fliegt! 

What a year

It's Sunday, October 18th, 2020. Pemulis lives in Munich with his wife Joelle and two small children Helga and Heinrich. Twenty one years ago to the day (or so) Pemulis was eighteen years old and wheels up on Air Canada XYZ non-stop to Paris. Bill Clinton had more than a year remaining in his second term. The world was on edge awaiting the Y2K crisis. And who could have imagined two decades ahead and the arc of history that would transpire. Not this dude.

In the intervening years Pemulis returned to Paris a half dozen times or so, one time "hitchhiking" from Leeds "for charity", another with Joelle taking advantage of the early 2000's hedonism of 10₤ EasyJet flights, and another with Joelle and her family on a summertime train trip to the Big City from deep in the provinces (aka Grenoble). It's funny this awe that a city can possess; Joelle doesn't seem to feel that same attraction to the City of Lights but Pemulis sure does. If she felt a little softer on the subject we very well might be living there now (well, the Gilets Jaunes and the burned out cars and the crime and all that are kind of a drag and a stirring in the heart doesn't necessarily make for the number one reason to live in a place but whatever). But I digress.

Tying together the above-mentioned arc, another propitious event took place on this date just two years ago today. For on October 18th, 2018, Pemulis embarked on a new career as a soldier on the front lines in the ongoing holy war against cars. Or at least the war on human beings driving them. There have been highs and lows in the time between then and now, but as the wise Swedes Axwell, Steve Angello, and Sebastian Ingrosso (aka Swedish House Mafia) reassured me, besides to not worry not worry child, Heaven has a plan for me.

And so it was that last week (or so) Faceless Multinational Transportation Company X masquerading -- or "branding itself" -- as Friendly Progressive Transportation Company Y made the unsurprising decision to close the Munich office. This does not mean that Pemulis is out of work; rather, it means that he will continue, for now, pushing digital paper from the Ikea patio furniture (the Askholmen to be precise) not from a modern office in Munich's downtown core, but from his daughter Helga's bedroom for the foreseeable future.

So status quo, more or less. But symbolically? Perhaps something more, and perhaps just the push that Pemulis and family need to take the next step.

What might that step be? Well, theoretically one could live anywhere when one's office is your own home.

Boy are there options. Now options are, generally speaking, an objectively good thing. An Instagram Post once told me something along the lines of "wealth is not being rich, it's being free, and being free is having options". But then if the option of not having to choose is available then one might justly choose said option and that would be just as free as having more options, if you get my drift.

It would be great if little Helga and little Heinrich could keep up their language skills. Moving to the mountains in BC would be all English all the time; moving to the mountains in the Allgäu in the Bavarian Alps would be all German (and perhaps some Bayerisch) all the time; moving to Paris (remember the first two paragraphs?) would be good for some French. Munich has German and a great French school. What about a return to the Capital of the Alps? Shouldn't I at least learn German before I move away? To be fair, we've only lived here seven years so far...