MICHA.ELMUELLER

In a previous life I have written a Masters thesis. I handed it in at the end of March and have received my degree now. My university accounts have been closed and basically my university life is over now. For a long time I thought I would continue my academic career after the Master, but my experiences at university in recent years have made me rethink this heavily.

It’s somehow bitter that after handing the thesis in, I have traveled South America for a couple of months, moved to Berlin, found a job, worked for a couple of months and only now have received my degree. So in terms of starting a job, all the work I have put into my Master hasn’t been as helpful as I was hoping for.

I have published the thesis under a free license via the universities publication service. It is available there as a proper publication with a proper DOI which can be cited and stuff. The PDF is also hosted there.

Publication | PDF

After South America we travelled around in the south of Germany, visiting various friends in different cities. It was really nice to arrive back in Germany for the summer — everything blooming, amazing weather whilst most friends had their holidays and a lot of free time.

Our plan was to spend one month travelling in Germany, organize some stuff, find jobs, find a flat, and then move to Berlin at the end of August. I see this as an opportunity to start a new chapter in my life here. It already feels like I have left university a long time ago. I think the time in South America has amplified this perception. To me it also feels as if we’ve been travelling for a year or so, even though it was just a couple of months.

Luckily, everything worked out. Since September 1st, we are living in a nice, roomy flat in Berlin-Tempelhof. The area is quite green and there is a subway right around the corner. It is very easy for us to reach different areas of Berlin by subway or by bike. To my astonishment, riding a bike is very comfortable around here and it is very easy to get around. There are just no mountains whatsoever! The numerous bike sideways and bike traffic lights make riding the bike here further comfortable.

Also I have found a nice job here, which started at September 1st as well. I am still a bit flabbergasted that everything indeed really did work out. It’s even still summer here! The weather is amazing each day, a lot of people going out on the streets, eating ice cream, etc..

The company in which I now work since a couple of weeks started out as a typical Berlin IT startup five years ago. But opposed to many startups here, it was more of a business-to-business startup, highly technical, working with high performance computing, big data, machine learning, and real-time web services. They got bought a year ago and are now part of a larger company. The startup mentality (and office) though is still there. I think this is somewhat what I had been searching for: a mixture of big corporation and startup. As a further plus, I am developing software with node.js and git in unix environments utilizing open source software.

We’ll see how things work out, but currently I am excited to start anew here.

I got myself a little present: a nearly forty year old analog film camera — the Olympus OM-2n with a 50mm f/1.8 lense. I have quite some fun with it and since two weeks I photograph solely with this camera. I don’t even take a digital camera with me anymore.

The photos in this post have all been shot with the OM-2n. It is noteworthy that I haven’t post-processed them further — no color grading or other effects — these are the photos as I got them straight from film development.