Angelika When Michael set off for the Perl conference, sponsored by AOL as every year, to San Diego located about 1,000 kilometers south of San Francisco, I thought to myself: San Diego is nice, the ocean in July is nicely warm for swimming, and just like that, I packed my bags and went along.

Angelika With anticipation, we here in the U.S. follow the German election campaign. We smirk as we observe the Americanization of the campaign: televised debates, a German newspaper suggesting which party the reader should vote for – something that is usually only seen in the USA. It's remarkable how unquestioningly such American traditions are adopted in Germany.

Angelika Michael had been longing for this day for years: With our new Green Card, I can finally be working here in the US. Although I haven't been idle, no one was allowed to pay me for my efforts. The Tenderloin Childcare Center, where I volunteered twice a week for five years, immediately offered me a full-time position. However, I gratefully declined because the pay in childcare in America is more than modest, and a full-time job would have left me no time for my photography and various other activities. But now I am a substitute there. I can work as much or as little as I want and am assigned to groups that are missing a full-time staff member for various reasons (vacation, illness, etc.). The facility is currently undergoing changes, as it moved to a new building in the same neighborhood in August. We are now not only taking in more children but also providing spots for babies.

Angelika If you are entering the USA soon as a tourist, student, or business traveler and additionally maybe look like a potential terrorist, don't be surprised if the immigration authorities take your fingerprints, photos, and require you to regularly inform them of your exact whereabouts and activities in the USA. Although the authorities do not disclose the exact criteria they use to select certain individuals for this special treatment, I can put two and two together and imagine that it will primarily affect younger men from certain Islamic countries. Initial civil rights groups are protesting that this approach discriminates against Muslims. I predict the following: from time to time, the over-60-year-old German tourist or businessman or a family-of-five will be pulled aside for fingerprinting so that the immigration authorities appear "politically correct." By the way, the fingerprints are immediately fed into the computer to check if there is anything on file against the person in question.

Michael A letter from the "San Francisco Superior Court," the city's highest court, arrived by mail the other day. In it, Angelika was sternly ordered to participate as a juror in a trial. As you probably know from American TV series (like "Law and Order"), in the United States, it is not the judge who decides whether the defendant is guilty in a criminal trial, but rather a randomly selected group of twelve laypeople.

Michael By the way, besides Beck’s, Americans consider the brand 'St. Pauli Girl' to be German beer. I could barely convince a colleague that there's no way that's German. Unfortunately, I then lost a bet over it because, according to their website , the brew is supposedly made in Bremen (is that really Germany?). However, I have never seen it for sale anywhere in Germany. It also tastes awful, so I don’t think anyone in Germany would buy it."

Michael The "Newsletter Top Product" of this issue are the nose pacifier from Biore. Nose pacifier? Huh? This is what happens when a couple lives abroad for years and doesn't experience any corrective influence in their daily language use: they invent new German words for things they didn't know before. What do you call sticky patches that you stick on your nose to pull out blackheads from your pores? See, you probably don't know a word for that either. The French company Biore offers these practical patches here in the USA, which you stick on your moistened nose, wait ten minutes, then peel off and admire the blackheads that have been pulled out.

Michael Actually, I would have thought that there wouldn't be any interesting crime series left to watch in my life. I can only laugh at "Law and Order" or "NYPD Blue"; that's typical American nonsense that doesn't get an old dog like me out from behind the stove. When Angelika watches them, I usually listen to music with headphones.

Michael Last month, I announced that I would review the new album by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. This band hails from Los Angeles and, for me, epitomizes California. Not the death penalty California or the white suburban double-garage California, but the California of chaotic cities like Los Angeles or San Francisco, where there are still crazy people like the Red Hot Chili Peppers who don't care about anything and exude new ideas. According to my favorite show "Behind the Music," their bassist "Flea" once hammered on his bass at a concert until he had a hole in his thumb! And from the series "Behind the Perl," I confide in you today that under the (almost exclusive) influence of the album "Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik," I wrote "Effective Programming with Perl5" back then, a long, long time ago. Now it's out!