Michael Just like me, more and more people are getting upset about the increasing neglect and lawlessness in the city of San Francisco. Therefore, it is not surprising that enterprising internet people are thinking about how technology could get the situation back under control. For example, the app "Citizen" (its slogan is: "Protect the World") collects police reports, processes them by location and time, evaluates them, and then immediately alerts the user's phone if something happens within the set action radius.

Angelika Even in the land of packaging mania, it has now become widely known that things cannot continue as they are with waste. Above all, plastic waste needs to be reduced. Many Americans have been alarmed by the vast amounts of plastic waste floating in the ocean. On Oahu, where we were just on vacation, our favorite beach in Waimanalo had more plastic waste than usual this time, disrupting the paradisiacal image of the super fine, almost white powdery sand. Of course, depending on the weather and currents, more can be washed ashore, but if nothing is floating in the ocean in the first place, nothing can be washed ashore.

Michael As you all know by now, we travel to Hawaii every year for one or two weeks and always enjoy our vacation there very much. Since we rent private houses and don't stay in hotels, we get more of a sense of how Hawaiians live. On the islands, it is never scorching hot, but during the day the temperature does often climb to around 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and at night it cools down to about 75 degrees. Air conditioning is rather uncommon in private houses; instead, architects take advantage of the fact that there is usually a gentle breeze and install special louvered windows. These consist of about ten glass slates arranged one above the other, which a mechanism rotates simultaneously via a lever on the window frame, so you can either set them all vertically to create an (almost) closed glass front, or set them all horizontally so that the window is practically completely open, or any position in between these extremes.

Angelika Due to my job change, I'm now teaching the subject "Social Emotional Learning" in a second-grade class every day. It's a 40-minute lesson on positive social behavior. We have core topics that we need to cover in a school year, such as peaceful conflict resolution, fostering class community and friendships, strategies for reducing aggression, learning to lose in games, etc., but we also have a lot of freedom in how we approach the individual topics and what materials we want to use.

Michael Let's put it this way: I work at a company where a considerable number of employees are immensely wealthy by German standards. And how do you think someone who has, for example, 500 million dollars in their account, which is not uncommon, gets to work? Naturally, with a status-appropriate car. Sports cars from German manufacturers are a dime a dozen, so the higher earners tend to prefer something like a Lamborghini Huracan or a McLaren 720s.

Michael Isn't it amazing that Amazon has so many items in stock and almost always ships and delivers them at breathtaking speed? For example, if you live in San Francisco like we do, the ordered goods sometimes arrive on the same day. This is particularly remarkable in America due to the vast distances, because to deliver an order so quickly, the corresponding goods must already be in a warehouse that is less than a day's truck journey from the delivery location. To ensure this fast delivery for items sold by third-party sellers on the Amazon platform, Amazon uses an interesting trick called "commingling." And this is how it works: As is well known, third-party sellers must actually store their goods in an Amazon warehouse of their choice so that Amazon can offer them for sale on their behalf. If a customer from a more distant part of the USA orders the items, it would take forever to ship them by regular mail. However, if Amazon finds that the same item from another seller is already located in a warehouse closer to the end customer, it sends the customer those goods instead, since it's the same item anyway, and the delivery is much faster and cheaper!

Michael One of our most beautiful traditions in San Francisco until recently was to have lunch at least once a month on the weekend at the restaurant "Chow" at the corner of Market and Church Street. You should know that "Chow" is about 1 mile away from us, and on the way there, you have to cross a murderously steep hill as high as the Matterhorn. The path then leads through Dolores Park, where an indescribable hustle and bustle takes place on the weekends. All social strata of San Francisco gather there in a sometimes slightly rowdy get-together, with marijuana plumes wafting abound.

Angelika Those who know me well are aware that I not only thrive in my work with children but also have a passionate love for photography. I took advantage of our move to the USA to further develop and deepen this passion. At the beginning of our stay here, I wasn't allowed to work due to my dependent visa, which gave me the time to explore and investigate things that I had always neglected. Over 18 years ago, I also joined the photography collective Bay Area Photographers Collective . I am still a member there, and we meet regularly to critique and review each other's photos.