One of the advantages of staying indoors for three or four days is that you are spared the stupidity you without fail encounter every time you stick your head out of your own home.

But you are not safe from it. Quite apart from, against your better judgement, watching the news on Danish TV these last few weeks, here is my example from today, of the German IT angst/incompetence/paranoia/resistance:

Volkshochschule Berlin (VHS), which already has the most moronic system for searching, signing up and paying for courses (something they say takes years to change whereas anyone with the right IT knowledge say it would take them less than an hour), for some strange reason insists on calling me Heike although that is, for obvious reasons, not the name I have signed up with, and is, for even more obvious reasons, also not the name on the bank details I had to send them.

Weirdly enough, I only had to send the bank details once, although VHS is very proud of being divided into about twelve offices – one for each of the Berlin districts, and whether they ever speak to each other, or are connected in any way, depends on their mood and how the wind blows.

In addition to crossing out Heike and writing Helle very clearly on the attendance lists which I assume are sooner or later returned to admin, I have also several times e-mailed them and drawn their attention to the fact that they – on their own initiative – invented a new name for me.

I finally received a reply. Guess what: I have to not only send in an application for a name change (can you believe this – I repeat: THEY invented that other name for me – no I?). But wait for it: I have to send an application for a name change to each of the districts in which I am signed up for courses.

I wish I had not e-mailed them. Before, it was not even all that important to me. Now, with that reply, I am really p….. off.

It is not immediately obvious from the above tsunami, but words actually fail me.

Someone ought to introduce IT and computers to them – properly, and real software to replace the kind of Mickey Mouse software they seem to be using currently.

I am more inclined to stop going to any of the courses I am now signed up for, and make sure I never see or hear or read anything about that brain-dead institution, or is it those brain-dead institutions? ever again.

And people wonder why I hate people.

Added 25 January:

A person wearing a Wattenfall coat turned up at our respective doorsteps and rang our doorbells and knocked on our doors insistently. I finally opened thinking it must be an emergency, but he just introduced himself as coming from Vattenfall and only wanted to know who is my electricity supplier. Which is in fact Vattenfall. Which seemed to come as a surprise to him.

??????????????????????????????? Does Vattenfall also not have real computers? And if they do, are they using the same Mickey Mouse software that they seem to use at Volkshochschule?