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| February, 2008 |
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In this issue:
Raised by her mother and grandmother, both of whom she considers role models to this day, Angela lead a fairly normal childhood: riding bicycles, playing football, watching the construction of a giant cement wall slice her neighborhood in half, and, of course, playing with dolls. "I was six years old when the wall went up," she recalls. "It didn't seem odd to me at the time, but within a few years I started to grasp the weirdness of it all." Having family that lived on the East side, Angela's family adopted a Christmas tradition: "At Christmas, we would put lit candles in our windows to show the people in East Berlin that we were thinking of them and not forgetting them." She recalls standing on elevated train platforms from which she could see into the apartments of those in the East. As a little girl, trying to make sense of it all—it's not surprising she would resolve to teach when she grew up. One of the subjects Angela had in mind was English, recognizing the language as one of her main interests as a kid. But she admits her interest was, in part, fueled by a desire to visit the US. "We used to play Cowboys and Indians and I desperately wanted to visit Yellowstone. I even used to listen to American Armed Forces radio just to hear the sound of American English." Angela's bicycle was as close to a horse as she would get, but she cared for it no less than she would have a million dollar thoroughbred. She "tinkered with it and fixed it up," as she describes, but she was hesitant to really pull it apart and see how it worked: "I was too shy and afraid of it, being a girl." But "being a girl" didn't discourage Angela from playing football with the boys, or striving to become a fine athlete in general. An avid fan of women's sports then and now, she admits she's now "too old and lazy" to actually play on a football team. "I prefer softer exercises these days, like riding my bicycle and going to a low-key gym," she says. Angela eventually overcame her shyness of mechanical things in a big way when, while visiting San Francisco, she attended a course intended specifically for women wanting to wrangle all things mechanical. "The class was given by a wonderful lady who knew about everything!" she explains. "I got in touch with electrical and mechanical units, engines, welding, sheet metal and even car mechanics. This class really triggered my interest in blue collar works and gave me self-confidence for working with my hands." But Angela's inhibitions weren't the only thing that came down during the 5 years she stayed in California. Twenty-one years after she predicted it, the Wall in her home town did finally crumble. Though she longed to be with her family at the time, there was value to Angela in seeing the event unfold from the perspective of outsiders who didn't grow up within a stone's throw of the unwelcomed divider. "One night on American TV, I watched the tearing down of the Wall right next to where my parents lived. That was so emotionally for me. I called my mother at five o'clock in the morning Berlin time to tell her that I'd just seen them open 'our' part of the wall." Soon thereafter, Angela returned to Berlin out of homesickness for her family and friends. Not surprisingly, her formerly quiet, Wall-adjacent neighborhood had become a bustling intersection of East and West, and no one could have been happier about it. Determined not to let her new found "handy-woman" status stagnate, Angela enrolled in a two-year program that added digital electronics to her resume, making it official: Angela had become a mechanical master. Today, Angela focuses more on making things work for humans than she does machines. She avoids being the go-to girl for Canto office machinery, but never hesitates to take a wrench to her own bicycle. She keeps herself active, loves to sing, and loves the time she has off in which she does it all. She saves Canto customers from headaches by providing efficient order fulfillment services, and she even once saved the life of a plant that has since become a Canto office favorite. "I saved this plant from the garbage and made it look really beautiful again. But my wonderful big plant does not seem to like our new office—it might be too dark; it keeps loosing leaves; no end in sight!" (Canto recently moved its Berlin offices.) To Angela, her new plant-hostile working environment is the worst thing about her job at Canto. (Canto's CEO has since been notified of this horticultural emergency.) Reunited with her family in a reunified home town, Angela sees life these days with a healthy dose of optimism. As a grown woman, she can now reflect on the magnitude of the events of her life, and credits her time abroad as being the single biggest influence on her perspective: "I am positive that the whole world would be much more at peace if every young person spent a year abroad. I recommend it."
In this issue:
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