comdirect – External Strength

So two weeks ago I finally successfully applied for a comdirect Tagesgeld account. Comdirect is a direct bank, which means it has only Internet as the solely branch and doesn’t have brick & mortar branches. And Tagesgeld is like the good old saving account, you use it for saving not buying stuff. And yet when you need, you can have the money back any day you like.

Tagesgeld is usually provided only by direct banks to increase its competence against normal banks with brick and mortar branches. A Tagesgeld account shines mainly thanks to its high interest rate, which is true for my comdirect: combined with a limited sales promotion I get 3.5% interest rate till 5000€ in my first six months. That can make quite some money for me . And no it doesn’t charge monthly fees, yearly fees or things like that for its accounts. “Without if and but, too”.

But since it belongs to a direct bank, you may say, well I really just can’t throw my hard earned money all into the cloud; it feels unsafe. What if one day it vanishes? And that is yet another reason why comdirect rocks. Comdirect belongs to the Commerzbank Konzern, which owns Commerzbank, the 2nd largest bank in Germany. So it’s quite safe to be on board.

What’s more, since they are together, if you also have a Girokonto from comdirect, you can use the bank card to withdraw money from all ATMs of the cash group, including Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, Postbank and more. You can even withdraw or deposit money directly at the ATM and counters of Commerzbank branches. After merging with Dresdner Bank, Commerzbank now has the most branches in Germany of any banks, so it should be really convenient (I’m applying for a Girokonto soon!) and really safe to be with comdirect.

In addition to that, comdirect now offers 50€ bonus under some easy and fair conditions.

So attractive interest, good safety, great convenience and plus a bonus. It should remedy most if not all disadvantages of a direct bank.

Internal Beauty

But there is more, and that’s what I love the most about comdirect — its service. Simply put, you love it more as you use it more. I didn’t expect it, but it turns out to be better than Deutsche Bank. At least in my use period.

First it is efficient. A bank transfer from Deutsche Bank arrives at my comdirect account the next day. It usually takes 3 days to do that in Deutsche Bank. And a bank transfer from comdirect is instantly processed so on the second day it already shows in my Deutsche Bank account. It’s still slower than in China which you get the transfer immediately or after  10 minutes, but a nice step for Germany And it feels better.

Second, user friendliness. The website is thoughtfully organized (with the exception of Freistellungsauftrag – it is a column in the taxes page, my mental model expected it to be in its own page – but it is nonetheless logical, so I got used to it pretty fast). And there is this cute little “comfort transfer” function. Normally if you do a transfer, you fill out account number, bank number etc in different fields one by one. Comfort transfer allows you to just write all information together and computer will separate and put each into the correct field. It can be really convenient if you get the receipt from, say eBay or E-Mails and just have to copy and paste the whole. It’s not hard to implement either. So it’s really thoughtful and really comfort.

They even have a banking app for iOS devices like iPhones and iPads. The app is well written and a real app. I mean, it retrieves transactions, keeps them in an encrypted database and present them in well readable format. Unlike Deutsche Bank app, which is not much more than a customized web browser. And this app can organize information from other banks too, so you are able to have all your banks together to have a good overview of your finance status .

Third their customer service. It may be a disadvantage without branches and counters and people answering your questions face to face. But actually no. I saw they are the best direct bank in quality of service as of mid-2010, and it’s true. comdirect provides E-Mail and telephone support. In these two weeks I’ve already had 6 contacts with them via E-Mail (for my own questions, not due to their problems). And answer came to me either on the same day or the next day, all short, precise and very helpful. Plus, they have service 24/7. That means, even on Saturday and Sunday they will answer!

So structurally it belongs to a strong body, make your money worth more, and internally nice touches here and there, with great customer service. I really like comdirect and I can recommend it. I hope this will last, and as I experience more with comdirect, I will report them.

The Beauty

A best friend of mine, H4X0R got inspired on Sunday  from one of our friends T, who just went on a diet week, and decided that we kick off our days early with a bang: frühsport. I gladly accepted.

So on Monday morning zaviKling punctually broke off two guys sweet dreams at 7 o’clock and turned them into reality. H4X0R and I once again ride into the forests after a long time. But this time, unlike it in the winter where trees are on their bones, gray-ish and dead-looking, unlike it in the spring or summer where trees are different shades of green, it’s golden.

The golden fall, as we Beijingers describe the season, struck on me as never before: forest which is so tall and deep that light struggles to come through; trees are still with leaves, some green, most golden and some even deep red. And when you ride through, you feel the semi-softness and hear the melody orchestrated by the thick layer of leaves on which we went through, formed by tens of thousands of them, and they are golden colored.

By a corner alongside a small river I paused and was reluctant to move on. Running river, tall trees on a small rising hill, countless of golden, orange, yellow leaves on the ground, two guys on bikes.  Accompanied with the early hour that we set off, this unbelievable beauty found only in oil paintings feels just unreal to me.

The Gap

As being a Chinese in Germany language barrier come up to my mind every once in a while. I now feel much better when I intensively talk to one or two Germans as a year and a half ago when I just arrived. When being with more people, however, it still feels to me as somewhat inconvenient.

I always wanted to join the conversation, but it’s hard. I can now understand what the Germans are talking about but under two conditions: I must pay full attention to it and after a delay. The first hurdle is easy to get over: I just concentrate. The second, however, is more serious. And if the topic is far from university, I may have something to say if I understand the topic and plus I happen to know the cultural background.

I realized the reason why it seems hard for me to join the conversation is that even though I realized what they are talking about, after the delay they have already driven deeper into the topic or moved on to the next. So when I feel like saying something to the topic, it was already passé. And then I get to realize the next topic but the übernext topic comes before I had a chance to talk. That can be really embarrassing when the topic happens to be humor or jokes.

But I also feel that even though I like to learn with some Germans and I always do learn from them, it’s not like this the other way around. I didn’t understand it until Thursday afternoon as I was invited by H4X0R to have some marvelous vegetables with him for dinner. I finally had the courage to ask about this concern.

And H4X0R said, after several minutes of silence, that when he learns with the Germans they have similar tempo, and more importantly they each have their own ideas about the subject and through exchanging the ideas they think deeper, correct the wrongs and make the correct richer. — And with me it’s more single-directional.

It inspires me. It may be the consequence of the different teaching philosophy of China. There is the old saying, “one day being teacher, the whole life being father”. And being father or parents means in the traditional sense, you must “xiaojing”, or “respect” him: obey him. So we don’t really discuss much; what the teacher says or how to get scores in exams is hold as the truth. Or it becomes increasing likely, with the coming of the Big Brother, it doesn’t even matter what the truth is. Things may be rectified, people get vaporized and truth become unidentifiable, so unidentifiable that people increasingly don’t try to identify them at all.

In short, you learn the truth as you are told.

But this post is not about blaming others. I’ve never liked this philosophy so much, but I have to admit through the years I am really influenced by it which is ungood.

And I think having your own idea, standpoint of subjects of study instead of reciting what other says not only helps you understand the subject deeper and more correct, it also motivates you to learn. I’ve always had my standpoint about life and co, now I have to extend it to study as well. So for those I may have already had my inner voice, I will now try to speak out; and for those I haven’t had, I will try to have one first and then to discuss.

As to the delay thing, I think in short, time+courage+sacrifice will remedy it.

The Steveness

I remember when Steve was my neighbor in Woodside, Calif., and he had no furniture. It struck me that there wasn’t furniture good enough for Steve in the world. He’d rather have nothing if he couldn’t have perfection.

And I jokingly said, “The difference between me and Steve is that I’m willing to live with the best the world can provide. With Steve that’s not always good enough.” And if you look at how he tackles building a phone, or building a laptop, he really is in pursuit of this technical and aesthetic perfection. And he just won’t compromise.

– Larry Ellison, Co-founder and CEO, Oracle

It really takes someone not so common to build products that are extraordinary. Every time I come across something about Steve, he inspires and motivates me. This time I ran across cette silhouette on CNN.com, as he is declared CNN’s CEO of the Decade.

No compromise. I used to be a guy pretty inclined on perfection. But now I can’t say that anymore. I am now more focused on balance, but even that I am not sure. I feel like I’ve gone mediocre; that proud, confident me is leaving. And that’s a sad thing. I’ve got to find what I am on this earth is about. I’ve got to get back that me courageous enough to tackle on something no one has done before. I’ve got to get that vigor back.

So that’s it for today. I will be coming back more often. What I set out to do, I must finish it.

During my stay here in Germany I have discussed the chinese writing system with couple of people and their questions have inspired me to think and learn more about my own language. Sounds ironic but it’s true, which leads me to think about it in the eyes of the westerners.

I’ve always believed Chinese is one of the most beautiful written languages of ours. It is NOT that complicated to read or write as it seemed, once you get the basic ideas of the characters. It takes some memory works at the beginning but you can see the picturesque background of them along the way during its transition through thousands of years, which is pretty fun. And soon you will be able to read the chinese characters on spa ads or tasty asian restaurants on the streets, and show it off to your friends! Which is exactly what I am trying to achieve here.

Chinese “Alphabet”

This is the first of a serie of posts about chinese characters. And by the way, Han/汉字 (pronounce) is the way to say it.

One of the most interesting question that I have come across is that, “how many keys are there in a chinese keyboard?”

- 20000.

Of course not . If you see the letter or the alphabet as the basic composing unit of every word, there are only 6 of them in Chinese and they are called Stroke or Bi/hua/r 笔画.

Unlike indo-european languages, though, they don’t carry the sound, but they are the basic units and every Hanzi is written as a combination of different Bihuar’s.

They are

一(Heng 横, “horizontal”),

丨(Shu 竖, “vertical”),

丿(Pie 撇),

㇏(Na 捺),

丶(Dian’r 点, “point”) and

乛(Zhe 折, “bend”) .

So much for theories, let’s put them into practice.

Let’s first examine 汉字 (“Chinese character”, ).

As you can see, they can be divided into Bihuar’s. 汉 consists of 5 画 (Hua, “stroke”) and 字 6. Think of them as letters so the concept fits better in your brain.

The Bihuar’s are not written just in the left-to-right direction like indo-european languages. Basic takeaway is: up to down, left to right. I’ll explain it later but if you wonder how 汉字 (Hanzi) is written, here it is:

As you can see, each Bihuar is written in one stroke, like the letters.

And the relation of Bihuar and 汉字(Hanzi) ARE quasi that of letters and words. Because each 汉字(Hanzi) IS quasi a word: they have their own meaning. You write letters together to form a word to express a meaning, and you write Bihuar’s together to form a 汉字(Hanzi) to do the same.

So here, 汉(Han) refers to the Han Chinese ethnic group (which by the way, has big stars like Jacky Chen and Bruce Lee) and 字(Zi) means character. Every single character is a 汉字 or shortly, 字.

And when combined, they form a 词 (Ci, word). (Maybe “phrase” is better?) Have I just said each 字 is a word? Well I said “quasi’. 字(Zi) does have its own meaning but it sounds by itself a bit too short so people would rather say two or more 字s together to also express a meaning. Think of 汉字 “Chinese character”, people do that in English too. Sometimes two 字s with similar meaning form a 词 to express also the meaning, and sometimes two 字s with different meanings (Like “apple tree”).

So that’s it for now. I hope that you liked it, and that Hanzi’s are now already more systematic to you.

Summary

• Classes of Bihuar’s
• From Bihuar to Hanzi
• Basic writing sequence
• From Hanzi to Ci
• Example of 汉字 (Hanzi)