Reviving an old Eumig R 2000 projector

A few weeks ago I was carrying out the waste when I found something strange in the waste room. First it looked like a television, but when I took a closer look it turned out to be something different. It was a 8mm film projector.

I couldn't resist taking it into my flat and take a closer look. I plugged it into the power plug and turned it on. The lamp was still working and a motor was transporting the non-existent film. But there was some flickering on it's screen.

It must have stood somewhere for ages, so it was quite dusty. I started cleaning it and also opened it's case. It was quite a surprise when I found out that you can flip it's mirror outwards so you can watch movies on both the internal screen as well as the projection on a wall. The only thing it didn't have was sound.

As soon as this day I ordered a 8mm movie on eBay, the cheapest I could find as I just wanted to try it out. A week later I had the movie.

But how to get the movie into the projector? I failed feeding it at first. So I thought: "Maybe I need to rewind it". So I transfered the movie onto another film roll and tried again. I had quite some troubles getting the film through all the rolls and gears inside the projector. But finally I succeeded and had to find out: the movie was upside down. So maybe it was all right the way it was before. I retransfered it to the original film roll and tried another time. This time the projector accepted it and started showing the pictures on the screen. Hurray!!!

Later that day me and my girlfriend made ourselves a movie evening with 5 minutes of film. It was the Max and Moritz movie, part 1. As the projector is a silent one, we played a Ennio Morricone CD in the background. What an amazing experience for a guy who grew up knowing the television only.

As I never intended to watch movies on this device, I had the idea to sell it on eBay later on. But before I did, I came to a flea market and started talking to a dealer there. He said, that a few minutes earlier a guy wanted to buy a projector like mine. Before he could write down my number, that guy came back and I talked to him directly.

A week later that same guy came to visit my flat and took a look at the projector. And he actually bought it. So I sold my projector which didn't cost me anything.

Summing up I avoided that the projector would have been disposed in an inappropriate way, I had some fun playing around with it and I made some money selling it. I wish things like that would happen more often to me.

I'm On YouTube

This video was taken while the four of us were playing around with beer bottles.

Intercultural Social Competence

I'm currently attending a seminar at my university called Intercultural Social Competence. This course is quite interesting by itself. But for me it's just the thing I have been looking for - or better, it has found me.

It's like all my thoughts and experiences of the past half year coming together. I can relate to many intercultural differences because I have seen them in India myself this winter.

I started to love this seminar right from the beginning. It started with a quote from Sound Of Music. That shows how people from all over the world might perceive Austria, while most don't know how old that movie is or that not all Austria is that way.

Also, today we started the course with the first 15 minutes of Lost In Translation, a great movie about people traveling to Tokyo by themselves. I saw the whole movie about a month ago and it I loved it due to my Indian memories. But even more than that, today I learned to realize all the small details the movie offers. In the first 15 minutes Bill Murray arrives in a totally strange country. He has no idea what the local behaviors are.

This course teaches us all these little differences. For example, it's amazing how cultures differ in simple things such as greeting. While in southern countries you are almost hugged an kissed by everyone, in Asian countries a handshake is all that is accepted. If you are not aware of these things, you might screw up right at the beginning of a visit to another country.

I probably will post more impressions about this course during the week or next weekend, when the second half will take place.

Being more friendly to strangers

About a week ago I was walking my dogs in the morning. Many people pass by every time. But this time was different. A girl passed me. Well, there's nothing special about that - but shortly after she said "Hello" and went on. I turned around. No one else was there but she kept on walking in the opposite direction. It got me all a little confused.

Having seen the movie Waking Life I remembered the ant scene where the narrator passes a woman and she starts talking to him:

I mean, it’s like we go through life with our antennas bouncing off one another, continuously on ant auto-pilot with nothing really human required of us.

I've thought about it after seeing the movie and I'm thinking about it again: why do we ignore most people on the streets? Can't we all be a little bit more friendly or at least notice the people we pass?

In the future I want to be more friendly to strangers. For example, today a girl wanted to cross the streets and was unsure whether I'd stop my bike. Instead of going on, I stopped and gave her a smile to let her know it's safe to cross. She smiled back.

It doesn't take much - but when everyone does it, life can be a lot more enjoyable.