I just had a meeting with one of my local bosses here, a
"Mitarbeitergespräch". That is where you tell each other what you think about
your work, your performance and these things. Well, he thinks, I should work
more. I do work something like 40 to 50 hours per week now, in dried air,
noisy environment and you know all that because I always rant about it. I get
paid for 19.5 hours per week, I will not get my PhD for what I am doing now...
I'll stop here, I am repeating myself.

My Boss is not a bad person, there's worse on earth. But he has been working
in this big research centre now for a long time, he has basically no friends
outside work, no social contacts other than his collegues. His home is on the
other half of the globe, somewhere in the States. So all he does is working,
because there is nothing else. As do most of the people there. Most of them
are from far away, none of them have any social contacts outside work (they
are physicists, so not of the most fashionable profession). Everything they do
is hang around at work. Most of the time not really productive, but they are
there. And that is what they expect of me.

I do not want to end up like that. I do have friends outside work. I try to
have social contacts which are not collegues. I even would like to get a
girlfriend some day (not speaking of family, this is so far off, that I do not
even think about it). So, maybe I am a bad physicist. But I think this is much
more than weight up by being a human being.