I've been looking intensely for work this week, as the regular unemployment money known as 'Arbeitslosengeld I' will stop arriving on March 23rd. Besides I realized that I have applied far under the 2 jobs per week the federal jobs agency asks for.
That said, after researching one job and carefully writing a cover letter and sending off an email, it was returned to me as undelivered mail that had been identified as spam. I tried sending from another address: same result. And I don't think there was any warning in the job posting about not attaching PDFs to email.
Concerned that maybe the company was not receiving any applications due to an oversensitive spam filter, I tried telephoning, but it didn't ring at the other end nor did anyone pick up. So then, as the company was in the neighbourhood, I went there in person.
One of two receptionists at the building, which housed multiple offices, tried to phone the job posting contact, but the lady was out on her lunch break; so instead the receptionist asked me to write down my email address and phone number. So far I have heard nothing back.
Anyway, I thought the whole thing was funny/depressing.
*
Next week I'll write a German test that will hopefully prove my language proficiency for university admissions. But if accepted to study for my Bachelor's again, I'd only be starting in October, so the question is how to set up my health care and other things before then.
One thing I'm thinking of doing is to apply for freelancer status with the Finanzamt, so I can at least accept mini-jobs (which was difficult to do when registered as unemployed, as I'd need to earn under a certain amount or sacrifice my unemployment status, including health care & pension subsidies).
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Anyway, I haven't known exactly what to write, but I'm still frustrated on a daily basis by the way the Israel-Hamas war is being discussed in Berlin.
It feels very personal right now because for my amateur choir's summer concert, the choir master has put an Israeli song and a song by Mendelssohn on the programme, to show solidarity.
If the Israeli song were about peace, I'd be fine with it, but it's about something to do with the 'wells of deliverance.' And it's more than fine by me if Mendelssohn's music brings comfort and peace to German-Jewish Berliners who are interested in his music. But as an indirect descendant I feel almost physically nauseated that his music seems to be used to pull a veil of respectability over the actions of the current Israeli government in the Gaza Strip, and for example if I had any power I would remove his music from any programme of a Berlin event where political figures like the current Israeli ambassador are attending. And it's a little ironic talking about 'wells of deliverance' when millions of people in the Gaza Strip have been drinking brackish water that has been making some of them sick.
Because I have Israeli friends who I know are not doves and at least one of whom knows people who went missing in October, and because there are genuinely attacks on Jewish and Israeli people and installations in Berlin (and have been long before last October), it feels like all of my anger and frustration have nowhere to go.
I'm angry about the killing on a massive scale, starvation, indirect torture e.g. through women giving birth without anesthesia, and wholesale destruction of homes, in the Gaza Strip. But I'm also angry about what I consider the weirdly lackadaisical approach that the current Israeli cabinet has used to putatively try to recover and safeguard Israelis. Take as an example indiscriminate bombing that resulted in the deaths of hostages. I know that the voting public will not agree with me — and Sadat (in Egypt) and Rabin unfortunately experienced grim consequences of taking the other path —, but I think it's also highly likely that choosing a military route in this conflict is actually far less likely to save Israeli lives than a peace agreement, if you start by counting the deaths of Israeli soldiers since October 7th.
Attending a pro-Israel rally (in a journalistic capacity) I also felt that the German President showed far more care and attention to the hostages' family members who were speaking at the same event, alluding to them by name and pledging them his support, than the Ambassador did. The Ambassador went off on a self-indulgent ramble where inter alia he complained about German political insider baseball like statements by the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung.
Hopefully all of that won't annoy anyone too much. Either way, it's a relief to get it off my chest.
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