Mobility
May I present thee my first car?
It's a Nissan Almera N16 Hatchback, manufactured in 2000 (which btw. will celebrate its eighth birthday tomorrow as I just realized), and its mine 
I just drove it for the first time from Friedberg (where I bought it) to Darmstadt1) – that was my first long distance drive since I got my license back in September, and I was bloody nervous but calmed down thankfully after I discovered that I still can drive.
Grocery shopping and getting to places in general just got a whole lot easier2).
1)
thankfully not alone, thanks Mom for that wonderful job as my fellow passenger!
2)
as soon as I get that skepticism regarding my driving skills out of the way, it still takes a couple of minutes before I enjoy driving 
Linkbacks
I actually planned on writing a longer retrospective of my year 2008, but failed at doing the writeup -- just not my thing I guess. So just a quick and short one :-)
2008 was a rather interesting year for me. I decided to drop my PhD plans, got my first car, gave up my job as a research assistant, saw some of my friends for the very first time, and of course also got some stuff done regarding private projects. I also finally moved to my own server (shared with a friend) and revamped the layout …
blog/2008/07/mobility.txt · Last modified: 2008/07/24 19:20 by foosel
Discussion
Congratulations!
don't you think that owning a car is pretty much 80's?
we use car sharing for grocery shopping … that's the future!!!
but seriously: congratulations on your purchase!!! i often miss the freedom a car gives you… use it well… overuse it…
The rising prices for gas (and the green parts of my conscience
) make overusing it pretty difficult, so I'll stick to using it well 
Pictures or it… no wait… Uhm… Well, congratulations
Good choice. Real hackers drive Nissan (ni san - get it?).
ROFL, I didn't even realize this up until now, thanks for the hint on that
Now, if there only was a Yon Ni brand, that would be my next car in a couple of years ;)
But stay away from ichi san san nana. That's only for script-kiddies. ;)
Your “Subscribe to Blog” link at the right doesn't work for me. But, if I substitute DOT COM for the DOT NET, it does work. I'm located in China, so perhaps that is part of it, but I did try via private VPN, and also a proxy.