TOGO

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
I hope you are doing fine. Alle the best for you.
Hope to hear from you soon

Hi everybody!

Welcome back to my blog. Maybe you were wondering about the title of this week's blog - Nkosinathi Dladla. Last year between October and December I was working in Bethlehem, South Africa. In order to keep up my commitment to development work and to South Africa, I decided to become godfather of a little South African boy called Nkosinathi Dladla.

Nkosinathi lives in the SOS children's village in Pietermaritzburg, close to where I was working last year. His parents where not able to support him and gave him away with 4 years to the children's village, where he found a new home. I will support him financially, so that he can have a good education and hopefully make his way out of poverty. I know that it is only a small contribution that I am making, but I believe that if everybody gives a little, there could be much less poverty and suffering around the world.

Except sharing this news with you I want to share some pictures from the happenings of the last weeks. I have done quite some traveling the last weeks. Three weeks ago I have been in Geneva where I visited my friend Antje. We did a nice wine tasting tour through the vineyards around Geneva.

Two weeks ago I met my gorgeous girlfriend Vani and my good friend Jochem in Amsterdam.

Last weekend was my flatmates (Julia) birthday party. Our foosball table prooved one more time that it is the party attraction number 1. Neverhteless it was closely followed by Singstar, the Playstation karaoke game.

So much for this week. I hope you are all doing fine.

Regards

TOMMY

Keep it real!

Hello everybody!

I have not written in a long time. There are times in your life when you act more and there are times when you reflect more on your actions. Obviously I write my blog more often when there are times where I reflect more.

This weeks blog is about the events of the last couple of weeks, especially the Oktoberfest in Munich, about happiness and of course you get a new book tip.

Let’s start of with work. I really enjoy my job at Coke. It is a fantastic team that I am working with and the tasks are also diverse and challenging. Nevertheless after about 3 months my initial motivation has come back to a normal level where I enjoy work, but I do not regard it as bringing real meaning into my life. I believe you work to live, not the other way round.

Furthermore I found out that my probation period did not only cover my work performance, but also my skills in playing Kicker (table soccer). I have mastered both tasks, which really made be happy.

Two weeks ago, around 20 of my friends from college have gathered in Munich to celebrate the famous Oktoberfest. As you can see we were wearing the traditional bavarian Lederhosen and Dirndl.

Julia and me


Thomas E., me and Fabi

It was great fun to meet all these guys again, especially as it has been quite a while that I have seen some of them. The Oktoberfest is over for this year, but I hope there are even more people coming over next year to celebrate.

I believe this blog is a great tool to share experiences and pictures with all my friends from around the world. I hope you enjoy reading my blog as much as I enjoy sharing all of this with you all.

I wanna share some more pictures from our apartement, as we now have finished all the decoration.

My room


Living room


Living room II


The kitchen with our beautiful new washing machine

Julia's room

Entrance

All of us search in one way or another about happiness in their lives. A couple of weeks back in time I had a very thoughtful discussion with some of my friends exactly about this topic. Happiness and the way to achieve it. The discussion started of with the relationship of money and happiness. The question was if happiness has any relationship with your personal wealth. We all came to the conclusion, that there is no direct connection between the two. Money makes your life easier and gives you more options, but it can in no respect, buy you happiness. After having closed on that point we struggled to find a common understanding of the word “happiness”. Is happiness the small glance of a sunray in the morning, is it a beautiful flower that catches your attention or is it the climax during sex. Is it a short moment of happiness or can it be a status of your mind? Only if it is the second it can also be something that you aim for in life. When being asked about their goal in life, a lot of people say that they just wanna be happy. So how can you achieve this?
The happiness that all these people what to achieve is based on three main pillars.

1. Family & friends
2. Health
3. Personal fullfilment

Only if all three factors are taken into account you can, in the long-run, truly be happy. The focus of your attention changes during your life. When you are young family and friends play a vital role, whereas health and personal fullfilment are of minor importance. When you grow older, during your twenties and thirties personal fullfilment becomes the center of your attention. Your career takes up a lot of your time. When you mature health often becomes the most important issue. If you decide to start your own family your focus switches from your career to your own family and your kids.
For me personally, this insight really helped me to understand that there is not only one thing/pillar, that can make you happy in the long run.

Coming to an end, I present you this weeks book tip. It is probably most interesting for German guys, due to the fact that the book covers the German psyche. The book is called “ Deutschland auf der Couch” and is written by Stephan Grünewald. The author and his institution have conducted over 20,000 interviews from which he paints a conclusive picture about the German behaviour and why Germans are the way they are. I can recommend it to any German and everbody else who has some interest in psychology.

I hope you enjoyed my blog.

Hope to see you soon.

TOMMY

Keep it real!

Hello everybody!

In the last six weeks the working life has also started for me. I tried to avoid it and succeded in not working for a whole year after my graduation in 2005, but now it has come to an end. Living in Berlin is really fantastic. The city is so diverse and you can really find a barrio that suits your preferences from totally trashy garage bars and second hand shops in one area to posh clubs and luxurious shopping in other areas.

Street festival - "Carneval of the cultures"

The last weeks of course were dominated by the soccer world cup. The Germa team did not win the cup, but still it was a fascinating time. Due to the fact that Coke was a main sponsor of the event I was lucky to grab a ticket for the game Germany-Ecuador. It was really fascinating to catch the atmosphere live in the stadium.

Opening party of the soccer world cup



The Olimpic stadium in Berlin


Claudius - a collegue from my team at work



Germany - Ecuador 3:0

I finally also managed to buy furniture for my room and last but not least after 6 weeks it does not look that bad anymore. Judge for yourself. I am really happy with our apartment, which is in a downtown, renovated old house and has 90 square meters. I share the apartment with Julia a very good friend, who I studied with in Reutlingen.

Julia & me


My room


Julia's room



Living room


Kitchen

Here are my new contact details:

Gartenstrasse 108
10115 Berlin
Germany
Phone: +49 30 23 13 20 84

Of course I keep my private e-mail (thomasgorski@gmx.de) and my cell phone number (+49 178 321 321 0), but you can also reach me at work by e-mail tgorski@eur.ko.com or phone +49 22 606 9438.

I also have a new spot that I want to share with you. Enjoy.

Optician

So much for this time.

Hope to hear from you soon.

All the best.

TOGO

Keep it real!

hour trip to Bratislava. Even so we missed the first flight we still had a blast in the short time we were there.

Our hotel



Thorsten, myself and Chris drinking Absinth

I think I can speak for all three of us, if I recommend Bratislava to everybody and in general all cities in Eastern Europe, especially those smaller, less knows cities. We are already planning new trips to the east.

I also managed to see my girlfriend in Madrid for a couple of days filled with fun, s.. and extremely hot weather.

Because of my job I had to move to Berlin, which I did two weeks ago. The city is extremely cool and with all the small cafes, bars and restaurants reminds me a lot of New York. Of course not as freaky, funky and cool as NY, but I am sure it is the best alternative to NY, at least in comparison to all other German cities.

Brandenburger Tor

I am sure in the next weeks a lot of stories from Berlin will follow, especially as the soccer world cup starts in less than two weeks here in Germany.

As I have not read much lately and I am slowly running out of book tips I will recommend you a movie. The movie is called "Tsotsi". It is about a South African Gangster that one day, after he has stolen a car, finds a little baby in this car. He feels obliged to take care of the baby, which slowly changes him to become a better person. The movie won this year's Oscar for the best foreign movie.

So much for this time. I hope you are all doing fine.

Looking forward to hear from you.

TOGO

Hello everybody!

This weeks gonna be a proper blog again, after last edition’s party focus. I o wanna introduce a new category to my blog.

The new category is going to be “ad of the week”. Due to my current internship I see hundreds of ads every day and I think it is a nice idea to present you my week’s favorite. Some may be in German and I already apologize in advance to all the English-only speakers. Nevertheless really good spots work in any language and I am sure you guys gonna have some fun.

This week I want to show some ads from MTV that have been censured after the first print. I believe they are fantastic and really open up your eyes for the real global problems we are facing in the 21st century.

Text next to the towers: “2.863 people dead”
Text next to the guy: “40 million people worldwide are infected with HIV/Aids”
“The world stands united against terrorism, it should be united against HIV/Aids”



Text next to the towers: “2.863 people dead”
Text next to the child: “824 million people are hungry”.
“The world stands united against terrorism, it should be united against HUNGER”



Text next to the towers: “2.863 people dead”
Text next to the old guy: “630 million people are homeless”.
“The world stands united against terrorism, it should be united against POVERTY”

These ads directly lead me to this week's topic, which is global issues and how our brain deals with it. I wanna talk about this topic especially because I was so shocked about my own behavior after I returned from South Africa.

For three months, during my time in South Africa, poverty, hunger, starvation, HIV/Aids and other life threatening diseases were at the center of my attention. After my return to Germany in December 2005, I nearly immediately switched back to my ordinary consumerist life-style, that I practiced up until South Africa. It was really scary how little time it took me to get back to my old habits. While I was in SA I was often contemplating. Why do so few people bother about the horrible conditions, life threatening diseases, poverty, etc. that exist in vast parts of our world. I was even condemning people that only want to earn huge amounts of money for themselves. After I came back home I changed my mind because I found out that our brain has a mechanism to suppress topics that are not part of our day-to-day living, especially if they are unpleasant. For most of the people in the western world for example HIV/Aids only is a distant topic that they have read about or seen on television. How can you really care about things that are so far away from your life? I think this mechanism of our brain is natural and helps us to focus on the most relevant things in our everyday life.
If you have to deal with these issues on an everyday basis, you get a totally different perspective. Only then your brain has the constant stimulus that it needs and also wants to work on it i.e. improve the situation. I know that this mechanism is not necessary, as it does not apply to everybody. There are wonderful people out there, famous or not, that want to help the underprivileged even if they do not have everyday contact with them. I admire people such as Bono or Bill and Melissa Gates that fight against poverty and HIV/Aids around the world. Therefore you cannot really explain the little global support for issues such as HiV/Aids and poverty reduction.

So what makes these people think different? Of course they often have the advantage that they have to care less about financial security and how they can finance their everyday living. Nevertheless there are also many rich and famous out there who do not give a ... what happens in the third world. The impact of actions from rich guys is probably much bigger than of less wealthy individuals. But it is not the rich and famous that can make a difference, but every individual person, such as you and me.

I write about this topic for two reasons. First of all because it is on my mind since I came back from South Africa and secondly I want to sensetize you for the problems that I have seen and experienced with my own eyes and tell you that you do not have to do a lot to help, but everybody can do something. Either a donation, helping with your own hands in a voluntary project, supporting an NGO, helping people in need around you, etc. There are so many needy people out there. You just have to open your eyes for them.

Enough preachment for this week. Go and help other people.

Last but not least our weekly book tip. This week’s choice is by one of my favorite authors Francois Lelord that you heard about three weeks ago. His first book "Hector and the search for happiness" is a beautiful story about a psychologist who travels around the world to find out the secret of what happiness really is and how you can achieve it.

So much for this week. I hope you are all doing fine.

Looking forward to hear from you.

TOGO

Hello and welcome back everybody!

Sorry for the delay, but there was definitely some carnival backlash. From Thursday to Monday last week it was party non-stop. It was my first carnival here in Düsseldorf so I did not really know what I was expecting. Thursday started nicely with free beer at work and then continued at a nearby bar with some colleagues from work.

O&M colleagues

Friday and Saturday were pretty much dedicated to a huge reunion with friends from my university. All in all we were more than 25 guys from my university. Of course we all also dressed up nicely.

Chris, doctor Will & nurse Nadja


Me, with my lovely afro wig and porn hat and doctor Will


Manfred from my apartment (WG)

Saturday was pretty wild as we tried to get from Düsseldorf to Cologne with 10 people in a van with seats from only two. We spontaneously decided to put some mattresses on the back of the van get a crate of beer and head towards the carnival Mecca of Cologne. After a couple of beers the safety issues were also forgotten and we finally managed, after only one minor car accident, to get to Cologne.

Klaus, Amelie, Ben, Eni, Christoph, Karla & Me


Money is my only religion a.k.a. Fabi



Baby I have the money a.k.a. Chris



The porn bees giving everything to conquer the magic duck



Chris the sheik and Thorsten

The whole weekend was really crazy and a lot of fun. For all of you who have never been at the Germany carnival in Cologne or Düsseldorf it is an absolute must to see it once in you life. Absolutely amazing!

Monday was a bit quieter and some guys from my apartment and I only managed to watch the traditional Rosenmontagsumzug in the old part of the city of Düsseldorf.

My apartment homies

This week's blog is absolutely free of deeper, more intellectual topics. But I have already saved some stuff for the next edition. I thought I better not mix party stories/pics with more serious topics.

Of course I do owe you another book tip. This week's choice is a real classic that I believe everybody should have read. It is Aldous Huxley's most famous novel: Brave new world. It is a science fiction book, but with a lot of links to reality that might have looked like Sci-Fi, back in the days when it was written (I cannot rememeber the exact time, but sometime around the 50s or 60s). I believe that as humanity progresses everything that is said in this book becomes more and more real. You really have to check it out for yourself. Those who have read it know what I mean when I compare Soma to anti depressants and draw connections between cloning and the practices described in the book and so on.

I hope you got a positive picture of carnival.

Looking forward to your thoughts and ideas. I guess there are not that many after this week's party only blog.

Regards

TOGO

Keep it real!

P.s.: I am still job hunting. So if anybody knows of a vacancy, let me know.

Welcome back everybody!

This week’s blog is a special one, because I do not wanna bore you with my life stories, but tell you some little stories about what love is all about. Enjoy!

Little blossoms of love

1. Ideal love would be if you never argue with your partner
2. With the people you love most, you sometimes argue the most
3. You have to fight for your love
4. True love is, when you have no desire to be unfaithful
5. True love is when you are not unfaithful, even if you have a desire to
6. True love is when you always know what your partner wants
7. When you are in love, it is wonderful when the other person knows without saying what you want, but sometimes you also have to help him/her by telling him/her your wishes
8. Sexual desire is necessary for love, but not all the time
9. Withdrawal is a sign for true love
10. The sexual desire of men, creates many problems
11. Jealousy is inseperably connected with love
12. Love desire in a permanent relationship (not long distance) can reach a maximum of 18-36 months
13. Love desire is often incredibly unjust
14. Even if they are in love, women love to dream of the romantic affair
15. If lovers would truly understand each other, they might not love each other anymore
16. Jealousy is inseperably connected with sexual desire
17. Jealousy is a sign of an emotional relationship
18. Love is, when you immediately feel when your partner is unhappy
19. Should love be a mix of your own interest and emotions?
20. Love means to recognize the partner’s beauty, even if others cannot see it anymore
21. Love shows itself in the tests of fate
22. Love is when you start smiling if you see your partner
23. Love is like a revolving door, you always reel around in a circle, but you never quite manage to get together
24. If you want to protect yourself from the pain love can cause, there is nothing better than a real mission
25. Love means to know how to dream, but also know when you have to stop dreaming
26. Loving means to abdicate
27. Love means to decide for one love

Love has five components

1. Fulfillment (the opposite of withdrawal)
2. Happy to give (the opposite of a sense of guilt)
3. Thankfulness (the opposite of anger)
4. Self confidence (the opposite of self conciousness)
5. Cheerful calmness (the opposite of angst)

I hope you enjoyed these insights into a topic, I believe everybody cares about and has felt it, in one way or another. These 27 insights are not supposed to be a guide or a walk through, as some people might prefer, but can help to understand love a little bit more. At least it worked for me.

Looking forward to your comments. I wish you all a fantastic week wherever you are in the world and whatever you do right know.

TOMMY

Keep it real!

P.s.: I have to admit that all these insights are not from me, but Francois Lelord, an author I really admire.

Hello everybody and welcome back to my blog!

It's great to hear that you all enjoy my little writing. Sorry for the little delay, but last weekend I have been in Hamburg and did not have time to write. I wanna start this week with a short summary of what happened last week and then try some more philosophical stuff before I will end with the already well known book tip.

Last week gave me the opportunity for a quick trip to London.

I love the London cabs


Piccadilly Circus

I was there for a job interview, but unfortunately it did not work out. So my job hunt continues. Even so it did not work out this time I really enjoy my time at Ogilvy & Mather and I hope that I can maybe get a job there or in another advertising agency, hopefully as cool and as many nice folks as here at O&M in Düsseldorf.

For the weekend a trip with some friends was planned to Hamburg to meet Thomas, Marc & Sandra and party the whole weekend. Fabi joined us from Munich, Eni from Frankfurt and also hard working Karla came with 24 hours delay from Düsseldorf. We enjoyed a good mix of chilling at home (best food ever - home made cake, Mexican specialties,... mhhhh yummy), partying on Friday and Saturday and sightseeing in between.

Marc, Thomas, Sandra & Fabi (P.I.M.P.)




Marc, myself, Fabi & Thomas




Me, Eni & Fabi


Marc, Eni & Fabi

I promised you not to bore you with my life stories, but also some more philosophical stuff. This Sunday was one of these days where I asked myself what the meaning of our life or more particularly my life is. Can it really be everything to work Monday to Friday at a company and then at the weekend party, drink, go to the movies, read, drink Starbucks coffee and relax and then start over again the following Monday? Is life really all about ourselves? I usually try to think about things, jobs etc. that would give my life more meaning I then have to think about my time in SA and lock back on what satisfaction I received from the fact knowing that I help others with the work I do. Nevertheless there were also great challenges during my time in SA and a lot of circumstances that I do not know if I could live with forever e.g. no friends around, no money, little social life, very slow progress in everything and so on.
I guess everybody has these moments were everything seems to be so meaningless and few things desirable in your life. Maybe some of you share my perspectives and we can together do something more meaningful. At last weeks interview I was asked what the greatest failure or mistake in my life was. Without hesitating I said that it is the fact that I am already 25 years old, studied business and still have not found my own business. The only problem is that I am a lazy bitch and would need a partner to kick my but once in a while. This is a desperate call for someone to join me found our own business. The only problem is that I already have a name and a corporate logo - TOGO. Everything else is negotiable.

Enough said for this week. Let's get to the new book tip. This week's choice is: Hector and the secrets of love by Francois Lelord. It is 27 facts about love that seem to be very obvious but have a lot of impact on your (love) life. The book also tackles trust, honesty, sex and chating. It is a nice, quick read, where you can definitely learn something. Enjoy reading.

I hope you had a good time in the last 5 minutes reading my blog. I hope you all continue to send feedback.

Regards

TOMMY

Keep it real!

Welcome back to my blog!

I cannot believe it myself, but I really managed to keep my promise and write my second blog one week after the last one. As I announced last week I will present you my trademark, write about my experiences, problems and challenges during job hunting, some Düsseldorf stories and of course a new book tip.

Let's start this by my little creative work that I have done this week. Some of you might know that I have the dream of founding my own business. I have not yet discovered any really clever business opportunity that has not been realized, but at least I already designed my own logo.

If you think it is not very creative, because it is only a combination of my first and my last name, I want ot remind you of world famous brands such as Adidas (Adi Dassler), IKEA... that have done the same. If you think the logo is very simple you are right. I wanted to keep it simple and plain. For those of you who fancy more complex logos I have developed two more.

Feedback is welcome. Of course only if it is positive. I can't stand critique.
Some of you might say that I have too much time if I am doing all this. I guess you are not right, but I believe there is more in live than only work, work, work, from 8 in the morning until 10, 11 or 12 o'clok at night. This is no critique, don't get me wrong, but I just do not understand it. This brings me directly to my next topic. Insights into a job seeker.

I have now been job hunting since I returned from South Africa about 6 weeks ago. I am not boring you with the companies I applied for or the horrible application procedures the companies torture the applicants on there websites and during the whole appliication process (most of you know it anyways and have gone through it). What I wanna talk about is the fact how your job selection and your daily work later on affect your personality.

First of all I bellieve that the job hunt should be less about salary, career perspectives or prestige, but it is essential to find an employer that matches your personality.What I mean with this is that I believe each company has a personality, which is similar to what the business community calls corporte culture. I believe if there is not a perfect match between your own personality and the companies personality it will either not work out in the long run or you will more and more take on the companies personality i.e. the personlity of the people around you will affect your own personality without you even recongnizing. For me this means a long and tedious job hunt to find out about the companies personlities' and try to find the perfect match. For me personally, I found out that working for an advertising agency seems a really good match of personalities. Let's see how it turns out in the end. I will let you you if I have found the perfect job.I would really be interested on your feedback on this topic and invite everybody to send comments. I want this blog/website to be more than "me telling you", but a platform for communication in both directions.

I guess this was enough about serious topics and I hope that by this time you do not already have stopped reading my blog.

Last weekend I made a really interesting experience, that kept me thinking about it for a long time. During a short stroll around the city, a beggar came up to me and asked me if I want to buy one of his newspapers that are written by people like him that are without shelter and money. I bought one of his newspapers, just to find out that he has ripped me off and instead of the newspaper he only gave me a useless brochure. First I was really angry about it and complained a lot about this guy. Later on I asked myself if is is right to steal or take from others as he probably only wanted to make enough money to be able to afford a place to sleep during the bitter cold night. Is it right if you steal from the people that have enough in order make enough to survive? I do not wanna write more about this, but I am sure a modern day Robin Hood would solve the problem easily. The question is: Why is there no Robin Hood nowadays??

I am coming to the end for this week and have a new book tip for you. This week's pick is "Tuesdays with Morrie" by Mitch Albon. It is the conversation of a old dying man and one of his former disciples. It is about all the important topics in life: death, family, emotions, money, aging, marriage, society, fear, greed, forgiveness and what we all look for - a meaningful life.

So much for this week. I hope you are all doing fine.

Looking forward to hear from you.

TOMMY

Hello everybody!

After another night of heavy drinking, the obligatory hangover in the morning and 4 hours of MTV (“Date my mum” and “Made” are really incredible) I finally decided to leave my hotel room at 15:00 o’clock in the afternoon. Right now I am sitting in a café or better a ShiSha lounge in Düsseldorf and write my first blog.

Yeah you are right. After having read the one millionth article about blogs I decided that the time has come to see what all the hype is about and start writing my own blog. I really enjoyed writing my little reports from my adventours in South Africa and it seems most of you also enjoyed reading them. With this blog I want to contiue this little habit that started three months ago. I probably do not have as many interesting and exciting stories to tell as back then, but I think there is still quite a bit happening around me, that I can and will write about. I gonna include a lot of pics for those of you who are super busy or just bored from my reading.

Maybe I best start with a quick round up of what was happening since I returned from SA. I spent Christmas and new year at home in Munich with my family, some of my old friends and some of my newer friends from ESB (namely Fabi, Eni, Nadja, Will etc.).

After a couple of weeks at home I decided that it is already enough time at home and decided to take an internship in Düsseldorf at Ogilvy & Mather (advertising agency).

It is just temporary until mid March, so I am still job hunting. In between my time in Munich and Düsseldorf I took two trips to Frankfurt/Mainz and to Hamburg.

Partybus in action

It was really nice to meet a lot of ESB guys after such a long time in Frankfurt and we had a blast at the irish pub. As usual partybus was singing karaoke and the crowd went crazy. (See for yourself)

On my second quick trip to Hamburg I took my pilot test. Yeah you heard right.. I wanted to leave all business non sense behind me and wanted to start a new career. Unfortunately I did not even make the first round of tests and so my dream of flying around the world for the rest of my live died rather quickly. Nevertheless I enjoy my time in Hamburg as I was able to see Thomas, Marc and Sandra. They have a beautiful apartment right in the city center. See for yourself.

Thomas E. aka Prince Charming, Myself, Sandra & Marc

Coming back to my internship here in Düsseldorf. I work in the strategic planning department which is really fun. The people are super relaxed (no dress code at all, sneakers are fine every day, even flip flops in the summer are fine). But the best is that they have subscriptions to a lot of funky lifestyle magazines (Playboy, Blond mag, Neon etc.) that you can take home and enjoy. The office building is super cool in the Media harbour of Düsseldorf.

Ogilvy & Mather office

The view from my office. Nice, na?


Nice office building in the media harbour


Another funky office building in the media harbour


Televison tower - Düsseldorf

Of course I saved the best thing for the end. Today I discovered that my agency has its own branded little boat.

OK. Enough from me for now, I guarantee you that the next blogs are going to be less about the past and about me and I try to incorporate some more lifestyle and philosophical topics.

At the end of each blog entry I also want to include one book tip, because I believe you find the best books by recommendations from your friends.
This weeks pick is: Michel Houellebec – “Platform”. A fantastic book about sex, love and current society trends all wrapped in a story about sex tourism. Sounds weired? Find out for yourself and send me your opinion.

That's it for this time. Hope you are all doing fine and until next week.

Your TOMMY


Outlook for the next blog:

- Tommy’s own trademark
- real life stories from Düssledorf
- insights into a job seeker