early morning thoughts

Good morning or something like that anyway.

I have been awake since 8.30 AM on my laptop clock, which would be a great time to wake up ... if I still was in Perth. Instead it is still pitch black outside. 8.30 used to be my natural time to wake up, which makes me come to the conclusion that I have not adjusted the slightest bit to German time yet - awesome!

I always had major problems with jet lags. Last year, when coming back to Perth from Germany, I managed to be jet-lagged for over 2 months! So, a friend of mine suggested to take a Serotonin supplement to get me sorted better. Serotonin, however, is a natural chemical in the brain with two functions. During the day Serotonin itself has affect on your mood and keeps you happy, at night it transforms into Melatonin and makes you sleepy. My body decided that it is daytime now, so instead of getting back to sleep after taking the supplement earlier, I lay in bed being a very happy cookie.
This reminds me, yesterday in the newspaper there was something about "Depression being a Nation wide disease in Germany", the day before yesterday I also heard about this in TV and radio. They reckon that 0.8% of Germans have depression, when I heard this I just had to laugh. It seems to me like in Australia everyone will be diagnosed with depression at one time or another. In my opinion the diagnosis of depression (and with that the prescription of medication) is made much much quicker in Australia. Don't get me wrong, there are people with serious depression out there (usually it is a chemical imbalance in your brain, because of a lack of Serotonin), but just because someone has a bad run over a few weeks because bad things have been happening to them, does not make them depressed! Depression in my opinion is a state of mind that does not have anything to do with events around you but rather a constant, unexplainable nagging/sadness or whatever.
However, the reason why I am writing about depression here, actually, has something to do with language and cultural differences. When I had my car accident I had to go for a check up at the doctors the day after and another the week after. At the second check-up he asked me, how I went the week before, and I was happy to declare that most of the pain had gone. But this time he hadn't asked for my physical state but my mental state making sure I didn't have post-depression. Something I didn't understand the whole week, was that everyone was being overly worried about me. Yes, my mum and my closest friends are allowed to do that, but what the hell did work care? According to the doctor, people suffer post-depression after 'serious' accidents. However, this wasn't even a serious accident, ok two cars got totalled but nobody got hurt. Well, to cut a long story short, my doctor explained to me that there have been studies conducted between different countries and mental disorders. Apparently, English-speaking (no matter which country) people suffer 10x more mental disorders than German speaking.
This, in my opinion, has to do with two things; first, if somebody complains in an English culture, people listen and care - not just close friends and family but also work and even strangers. If Germans complain, friends and family will care for a while but then u r very quickly told to get on with it. As long as u don't have a Serotonin deficiency, getting on with it is easy as long as u do not have the chance to dwell on it for too long. Dwelling on problems is hard to do, when people help you process things but then also tell you to stop being ridiculous if you overdo the complaining.
The second reason that I can make out, has something to do with the language. In the last 4 years I came to the conclusion that English is mainly two things: Implicit and packed in cotton-balls, while German is direct and functional. People who speak English are used to explaining themselves more, whatever you want to say you have to say it detailed in a million words, while German has one word for the same situation. To make my point clear, I will use one of my favourite examples of cultural differences:. This anecdote has been told to me quite at the start of my time in Australia, so I had lots of opportunities to observe situations like this: An Australian-born girl comes home with a new beautiful dress. The mother - Swiss-German - asks: "Where did you buy it from?" the daughter was absolutely beside herself being upset because her mum 'never appreciated' the things she bought/said/did. The mum didn't understand what just happened. In the daughters mind, her mum should have said "What a beautiful dress, I absolutely love it. Can you, please, tell me, where you bought it!? So, I can go there, too, to check out the shop." The mum felt like she had said exactly that in the one question.. Because German is such a straight forward and functional language, the speaker is used to say things in the shortest way possible and the receiver is able to de-code the message by reading between the lines, while English is not as explicit and people are used to explaining themselves more.
I have absolutely come accustomed to saying things in detail nowadays, by now it comes naturally to me. Yesterday I got an email about my first entry by a German friend, she wrote that she knows exactly, what I am talking about but she never thought about it this way. In our teacher's course we are taught to reflect on everything - I hate it in most circumstances but when it comes down to languages and cultures I have developed a passion for over-analysing things.
I just had a weird train of thought. Did ever anybody notice that apart from start of sentences, (city/country) names and the word "I" usually all letters are in lower cases in English? - of course you have realised, this is Primary School stuff. However, don't you think it is a bit 'I'-centred? What is so important about 'I' that we have to capitalise it? Doesn't this say a lot about a culture? I have to think about this some more. Just for the non-German speaking under us: In German you capitalise sentence beginnings, (city/country) names and all nouns but not 'ich'. Any thoughts about this?

Wow, this again was a ramble! I am sure it will quieten down soon. I will run out of anecdotes eventually :D

So have a great day everyone, I am off to bed, it is 10.45/4.45 now :)

T