Spain - Germany

I am back in Vienna again - after flying to FFM on Tuesday evening and flying back yesterday. Wednesday evening we watched Germany - Turkey from our living room stadium. I really need to brainstorm on this idea of turning the living room into a stadium for such events by using the beamer and the TV and potentially my TFT. We are only missing one sofa and then there shouldn't be an issue. Well, we will see...

It was my mum's birthday yesterday so we will celebrate that with a fantastic BBQ today for lunch (well, there go my diet plans...) and I will most likely meet up with some people in the city tonight. Tomorrow I would like to spend some time at the beach, and by beach I mean the "Alte Donau" and then watch the game somewhere.

I just got another email from facebook with another personality hint. This time I feel that I will probably have to start inviting my friends more for dinner and also start making more public speeches:

This email was sent by Compare People. You can disable emails here.
---
Your friends have voted on your strengths and weaknesses:

STRENGTHS:

most organized
best catch
most creative

WEAKNESSES:

best public speaker
best dinner companion



So, what else happened recently? It is very funny how people in different cultures have a different way of queuing up. I remember learning about queuing in my English class in Hungary. The first thing we learned was that it was not called queuing all around the world. Of course I don't really remember any more all that stuff so I had to look it up in Wikipedia:

The term "queue" is used more in British English, while the word "line" is used mostly in American English. Most of the United States "get in line," whereas New Yorkers tend to "get on line." Canadians use the term "line up." In the United Kingdom the expressions "form a queue" or "queue up" are most common.

The first queue related incident happened about two weeks ago when Estelle and I were shopping and we did the infamous "queue in two lines at the same time" cheat. Of course a guy behind Estelle felt totally offended by the concept and I couldn't be bothered to explain him that if he was standing behind one of us, he must have arrived after us at the counter so that he should have just shut his big mouth and let us pay first, but anyway. Maybe I learn karate or kickboxing and then go back with Estelle to repeat the experiment.

Then yesterday I noticed there were two cash machines at the airport and both were busy so I decided to form a single line in the middle. Of course the next 2-3 people who followed didn't get my idea and when I went to the next machine, the fight started on who was here first at the other machine and who was queuing properly and so on. People can be such fantastic guinea pigs ...

Hmmm...

I just finished reading "Flowers for Algernon" - it shocked me twofold. First because the whole story takes place in New York (is this a sign or something?) and secondly because I knew I read part of the book when I was in school but I only remembered at the last chapter that I have read the whole book once.

Please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard.

the power of facebook

Just recieved an update from facebook from the "Compare People" application:

This email was sent by Compare People. You can disable emails here.
---
Changes in your ranks:

#6 person who can drink the most (lost 1 place)
#7 most famous (gained 4 places)
#8 most studious (gained 10 places)
#10 nicest smelling (lost 2 places)
#12 most powerful (lost 1 place)

So what does this mean? According to my friends I need to drink more (no surprise there), I am getting more famous (very good) and I study too much (don't know what this means). I also stink and am not as powerful as I could be. I go take a shower now and will then brainstorm on my masterplan to become ruler of the universe. All of them. Good night!

over

out of order

just a quick update again. When I came back from Barcelona I realised that my vista pc won't boot and now there is a message saying that the hard disk is more or less kaputto. So the nice little dwarfs will send me a new one in about 10 days. Oh, and because I never created those system recovery DVDs, I have to purchase them for 40 Euros. Another lesson learned ...


So I am afraid there won't be an update in the next couple of days. No tales of my New York trip, or the weekend visit of Preeti and Sameer in Antwerp. The story of the extremely cool trip to Barcelona last weekend will have to wait a bit as well.

Ok, I admit. The real reason is that instead of blogging I am travelling again (I am in Vienna and will stay here until Tuesday) plus there is the football cup that I am kind of getting addicted to. I want to see Germany vs. Italy in the finals. So there it is, I said it. Good night!

Ouch but I like it

Barcelona is great. A fantastic city with great people, amazing food, fantastic shops and a nice beach to top it off. the last days have been great. The radiohead concert, seeing Mario, meeting Leire and Jorge, getting sunburned on the playa, eating pulpo and more. Now that we are packed, we will go for desayuno and after that I have to find a nice way to spend the remaining day. I am pretty sure something will come up..

Thank you for checking

The real reason i travel so much is that this way i have a better chance of having my camera checked regularly for explosives. So i am happy to report that my digital camera does not contain any explosives. Thanks for checking, dear security people in frankfurt!

The only thing that makes me wonder a bit is that i shaved and still they picked me?

Now i will switch off my mobile because i dont want them to check me in any similar way than what the did to my camera:-)

stuff

just finished watching the game. italy lost big time - holland played really well I must say. Until now Portugal, Germany and Holland performed really well - Holland & Germany were the best. Also I am pretty happy with the Austrian team, which did surprisingly well in their first game. Go Austria!!!

One more thing: a new iPhone has been announced. It has GPS, UMTS, it can fly and is going to be much cheaper than the current models (199$ for the 8GB one, 299$ for the 16 GB one). It will be available from July 11th. So I need to plan my next trip to the US I suppose.


The hostel for Barcelona is booked - we are flying on Wednesday. As usual, I will be sitting at the back of the plane I hope - because I always suspected this was true. Good night!!!

NIM'S ISLAND

Another sneak preview - another shitty movie. shame on you, Jodie Foster and Gerard Butler (I didn't realize it was him until I saw the poster - even though the stupid accent was in front of my face all the time!!!)

express post

just missed superman flying by
Originally uploaded by Captain Catan

Everything is well but somehow I didn't have time yet to report on my New York adventures this week. Tomorrow we are going to visit Preeti in Belgium and we will be back only on Sunday so here is a quick link to the pictures on flickr. enjoy!

lots of things

I don't really know where to start as a lot's of things have happened and are still happening so I will just try to do my best:

so last Thursday I went to Düsseldorf for business which was not really necessary in the end but turned out to be pretty cool BECAUSE this way I went to Brussels one day before it was planned. And met Gabor again, who I haven't really talked to for many years (except the occasional happy birthday Zsugabubus stuff - no comment, if you don't get it, too bad)

So it was pretty cool to catching up and having an honest discussion about how things were going in life.


Two more funny things happened this day. I had a bit more than an hour in Cologne to switch trains coming from Düsseldorf and so I deposited my luggage at the train station to head to the city for a quick walk. They have these super-ultra-modern machines that take your luggage underground like an elevator so basically you have one door where everybody puts in their stuff and then it is transferred to some huge hole underground and thrown on a big pile. When it is time to get it back, the little dwarfs then need to search through the pile and find the exact piece of luggage you deposited. They work pretty fast so normally it is not an issue. Except when there is a big Schwarzenegger-kind-of-guy in front of you who just deposited his luggage and he won't let you put in your card into the slot to collect your luggage because "this locker is occupied". Meaning basically that he wasn't familiar to the whole "one-locker-big-pile-underneath" principle. I tried explaining it to him but failed miserably so in the end a friendly deutsche-bahn-person had to come and help out. I got my luggage back and the dwarfs could continue working.

The other thing happening was not really funny but cool as I had an immense amount of mussels in white wine sauce in one of the touristic restaurants in the Brussels city center.

So then on Friday I worked in the Brussels office bumping into a lot of old colleagues. Was pretty cool. And then in the early afternoon I boarded a train to the city of Gent to attend the wedding of Nancy and Tom.


It was a real cool wedding - we were so lucky with the weather it was extremely cool. Plus There was Andrea and Rahul and many many more people I haven't met for a long time. ´Plus a wonderful boat ride. The food was fantastic (especially the Fritten on the first night - sorry Alba) but the wedding dinner was the highlight. First I was disappointed that we didn't have big amounts of food but then I thought it was much better this way. We had 7 or 8 different courses and were not dead afterwards. The food was simply fantastic. When I grow up and will be rich, I want this kind of food all the time.

The hotel was nice and I can totally recommend this region for people who are in love - maybe it was the fact that there were so many couples around, maybe the food, the good weather, maybe something else - just take my word for it.

The way back was a bit flat - by flat I mean my ass basically as I sat through the ride in the middle back seat of Jack's car - but it was a lot of fun - thanks again for everybody involved :)

We made some plans for Monday to go to some beach near Frankfurt (basically we never learn ...) but it became pretty clear on Monday that this would not happen. So I took my camera and my bike and went biking next to the river. It was a pretty good track and I ended up at the airport taking some pictures of planes flying by. Needless to say there were other freaks with bigger better cameras than me so it was a little frustrating. Well at least I didn't need a ladder to take my pictures...



the rest of the week can be summed up by this dilbert comic:


well, at least the first two cells - the last part is not really what was important, but I took it as a sign and started to go through my to-do-list with a bit more energy after having slept only 3 hours before my Friday presentation to my team.

OK now I need to speed up because I am going to New York tomorrow and I am not really packed (as usual, which basically means that the last paragraph was bullshit. Hmmm - makes me think...)

So on Saturday Rodrigo & Rosella announced that they were going to get married. Congrats and at the same time this reminds me of course of the clock ticking - tick-tack-tick-tack. Another bike trip this Sunday and as of Monday morning I am below 80Kg for 3 consecutive days! Whoo - hoo!!!

Then yesterday I went to the sneak preview to check it out after a very long time. The movie was surprisingly good - one of those movies I would not have seen if not shown in the sneak so that I am really glad I went. It is called "Leatherheads" and it is the new George Clooney movie - pretty authentic and funny.

The other thing that happened yesterday was, that Köpeck died. My beloved dog (technically he wasn't mine, but I guess a lot of people called him "our dog"). I spent so much time with him when I was still living in Vienna - I remember being left there with him during Claudias visit to Peru only shortly after he started getting used to me when he wouldn't eat anything as he was missing Claudia and I had to play with him for hours to make him eat. And those other times when I was studying and went for long walks almost every day just to be back at home for the "Mittags-Journal" for lunch and he would act like he hadn't watched me eating so that he would get the rests of the food when I was finished. We took him everywhere - to Hungary where people usually don't take their dogs with them; we took him to all kinds of places in Austria and once he even saw the Stephansdom from the inside (yes, we got thrown out).


I am really glad he was part of my life and although I am sad I will never play with him again, at the same time I am happy because I know he had a fantastic life.

Now I will stop writing because (as mentioned before) I am still not packed and it is now almost midnight so I will have to start NOW.

one more thing ...

I almost forgot the celebrity gossip news of the week:
- Eugenio and Maike got married last Friday
- Tina and Peter are engaged
- Elisabeth and Peter are engaged (another Peter ;)
- Scarlett and Ryan are also engaged.

Here is a photo of one of the happy couples - guess which one :-)
the winner gets some food or a piece of Sacher-Torte the next time I bring one from Vienna.

summertime

I just came home from a last minute shopping before leaving tomorrow towards Gent for Nancy & Tom's wedding. The plan is to go to Düsseldorf tomorrow for business then to Brussels in the evening, work from Brussels on Friday and then take the train to Gent in the afternoon so that I can join everybody for the dinner. I am excited and happy about traveling again, as usual ...

Anyway, what I really wanted to write is that I feel great. The city is full of happy people, the sun is shining and I even had one of those -hagen-dazs-2-minutes-of-pleasure-eternity-in-hell extremely delicious and hopelessly overpriced ice creams.



I am now going to pack and try to go to bed in time as my train leaves at 7AM tomorrow morning.

boring - or is it?

I always wanted to go to a horserace. It was pretty exciting for the first 90 minutes or so. You go watch the horses, go bet on them, go sit down and watch the race, curse and throw away the betting papers and then you go watch the horses for the next round. The most fun involved is watching the people around or practise your photography skills. Till next time ...

Sarah is out

just finished watching Germany's next Topmodel. Sarah is out - finally. They kicked her out because she believed less in herself than the jury did in her. Not because she was ugly. I actually don't think she is ugly. She has issues walking but on the pictures she looks pretty amazing. Also I can't believe they actually dug out Erika Eleniak. The one and only from baywatch and red alert. Whatever way you want to remember her. I don't know how old she is now but somehow her face looks like it has gone through some unnatural upgrades during the last couple of years. She was there to run along the girls on the beach. Hmmm - Interesting. I wonder what she is up to these days. If I remember right from her Playboy video, she has a couple of dogs she likes... I couldn't help but looked her up on imdb and she seemed to have played in E.T! I bet you didn't know that!!! Funny.

On other news we have been hiking today somewhere in the south - it was supposed to be a Weinwanderung where people walk and drink some wine but I didn't drink any. I am currently uploading the pictures to flickr. In the meantime here is a picture. Can you spot my four companions? (Click on the picture to get a bigger version. Here is the answer)



You can find all the pictures here.

UPDATE: of course the batman trailer is no longer on youtube. I will put up a link as soon as I see it becoming available

dark - darker - the dark knight

Just finished watching the new batman trailer. You can watch the original one on the official website and the new leaked one on youtube. I must have watched it like 5 times in a row and I still can't stop watching it.


There was this actor called Heath Ledger. He died last year of some kind of medicine / drug overdose in a hotel room. And I thought at the time - too bad, another one of these young actors incapable of dealing with their successes. I remember my ex-girlfriend watching a movie called "10 things I hate about you" like 13 times within 3 weeks a couple of years earlier and telling me all about how cool that movie was - this alone made me want to not watch it. But in the end I watched it and it was pretty cool. Then there was this other movie called "A knight's tale" which I absolutely loved. A perfect combination of a love story, rock music, some heroic scenes of fighting and humor. Heath Ledger was also in that one. He was also nominated for an Oscar for Brokeback Mountain, married to Jen from Dawson's creek and divorced later. He knew the Olson twins. The whole thing was so bizarre and so Hollywood.

His second last role was Joker in the new batman movie - which was totally ignored by me until I saw the trailer. I know this has been done before, but not this dark. Not this graphic. Just listening to the trailer without the mind-blowing images is great.
Heath Ledger is simply great - and I am sooooo looking forward to watching the whole movie in the cinema - hopefully in a fully air-conditioned one with THX this summer. All I have to do is move to a city where there is one ...

And I also hope I won't be watching this one with somebody who gets embarrassed when I cheer at the end of the trailer just like the guys watching it in the youtube video.

PS: I know I am hopeless and I JUST DON'T CARE :-)

say NO to pie and YES to paella

just when you thought the British would be silent during the European Cup in June ...

free ride

I am going to Vienna tomorrow for the weekend so it is time for a quick review of the last couple of days.


I spent the weekend taking pictures attending a photography course on the basics as a follow-up to the portraits course I attended a while ago. We went through the basics on Friday night (aperture, shutter speed, focal length, ISO) and then talked about a couple of affects we can do. Similar to the last course I had one of those mind-blowing experiences when they explained how to use my camera - another RTFM classic - I could have read the manual instead of spending 83 Euros on the course but this was much more fun. The course was a lots of fun as usual - despite the constant rainfall the whole Saturday. We shot raindrops, ghosts, bridges and ghost trains. And much more. You can look at all the pics here.


Saturday night we had another party in our flat - to celebrate Estelle and my 29th Birthday - it was her first and my not first... And I got more presents!!!

Also I am happy to report that not only have I completely rearranged my room but had a little experiment with my camera and a small Sideshow Bob figure.


Last but not least a small tip on how to earn a couple of Euros when travelling. I wanted to buy a ticket for the underground but the machine decided to take my money but keep the ticket. I ended up buying a ticket with my cash card after loosing €1.10 this way. The friendly ladies gave me back my €1.10 without any proof that the above happened on Hauptwache. All I had to give them was the registration number of the machine and when it happened. No identification asked. Good to know ...

PS: I am currently reading this book. It is pretty amazing so I have to read it slowly. I got the idea of reading it after watching this presentation by Al Gore

oscar is sick

somehow this video is funny and sad at the same time. just to put things into perspective ...

kater ist nicht gleich kater

I went jogging yesterday. I did a 4 km circle around the Eiserner Steg on both sides of the river and spent the evening at home as I was too lazy to go to the sneak preview afterwards.
Of course my legs hurt like hell today. Of course I went jogging again. Of course it didn't help. There is an old saying that goes something like "the best way getting rid of a hangover is to continue drinking". Obviously this does only work with hangover, but not the pain after an extreme jogging exercise...

Anyways, we had nice Lebanese food at the diversity Stammtisch near Bockenheim. Much better than McDonalds of course - I am only comparing so that I can have a reference to this video...

the running man

I just found this video on MC HAMMER's blog (yes, he has one - haha) - I need more of this!!!

don't look at me!!!

I am finished with cleaning the kitchen. Today I successfully made "Pulpo De Gallega". But it wasn't easy. I bought a pulpo yesterday at HIT after basically bumping into it and thought - let's give it a try ...

So I asked the guy at the fish counter if the octopus was ready for cooking and after a confirming YES I was ready to go. I picked up the ingredients after having found a recipe on the internet. This was yesterday. We were playing wii at Jack's place yesterday night and so today afternoon was Pulpo time.

I opened the package and wanted to start when I discovered, the octopus was actually looking back at me!!!! I thought it was ready to be cooked and so but it actually had the head and everything!!! I mean it was cleaned and so on but those eyes!!!! And so I began cutting off the legs and I had to hold the head and it was the size of a lemon and hard and slimy to it didn't feel nice. But I managed. And so 4 hours later and with a little help from my friends we had a wonderful dinner. I have to remember to fill up the kitchen with things like potatoes for next time so when I invite a couple of friends over for dinner they don't have to bring and cook half the dishes...

cool

maybe I will get one of those in the end ...

preparation preparation preparation

it is the second evening of walking through the city with my camera trying to capture the luminale and at the same time trying to improve my photography skills. After yesterday's lesson which focused on how to keep my camera dry in pouring rain, todays lesson is called "preparation preparation preparation". Therefore I compiled a list of things to do before going out to the city the next time to take pictures. Some of them are obvious (you would think ...)

1.) bring a towel
2.) bring a small flashlight
3.) check lens settings - especially if the "automatic focus" is properly selected
4.) check all other settings of the camera. Especially the sensitivity settings and the ISO level
5.) charge all batteries

Points 1 and 2 were the learnings of Wednesday evening. Point 3 became obvious to me after 2 hours of taking pictures and then checking the results for a change. Point 4 about 15 minutes later when asking myself why the pictures are so dark when taking them with manual settings. Point 5 joined the others on the list about an hour later while reshooting all the pictures taken earlier with proper settings.

Nevertheless I am happy with the results.

for Alba

I don't get it ...

bad joke

my April 1st joke didn't really work out the way it was planned. I guess my blog should be more alive in order to shock people by not blogging any more ... Still Alba and Petero - got you!!!

32!

It was fantastic to have brunch at my place for my birthday. We were 20 people and it turned out to be pretty fantastic - it was a very happy day and as I am writing these lines, I am listening to some music on my new AKG K141 STUDIO headphones. Thanks everybody!!!

blog no more

After seeing another disturbing movie at the sneak yesterday I have decided to go on an internet diet and stop blogging. Goodbye and thanks for all the fish!

lot's of things to do ...

- check out how to get to the company wintergames next weekend
- check which day we can go see "A picasso" in the English theatre until April 6th
- check if I can get tickets to Jean Michel Jarre for April 15th in Frankfurt
- invite people for the birthday party on the weekend of April 19th
- check out how to get to Budapest / Vienna on the weekend of April 26th
- check out how to get to Nancy&Tom's wedding the weekend of the May 10th
- check out how to get to the Radiohead concert in Barcelona on June 12th
- think about my vacation plans for this year

All these things are rather urgent still I am not in the mood of doing any of the above. Still I feel very satisfied with the list actually. So I will leave it at that and will go back watch TV or something.

One more thing: here is a video I found on youtube that made me smile. If you don't know why, you are probably too young ... or simply haven't seen it ever on MTV in the good old days when MTV was still playing music clips

snowing in amsterdam

Just realized I haven't written on my blog since two weeks. Weird. I am in Amsterdam for the long weekend with my brother and it has been snowing all day. I arrived late last night in pouring rain, today it was sunny and snowing. We are renting a car tomorrow and go somewhere - we still need to figure out where, we will see. We are watching Amelie on TV and as I told me brother that I totally don't remember this movie although I saw and liked it he told me: "Actually you are lucky with your shitty memory - you can relive things twice, hahaha". Hahaha - so here is a quick recap of the last two weeks before I completely forget.

The sneak preview used to be an exciting place to go to. The concept is to go see a movie that is new so nobody in the audience has seen it before and the best part is that you can actually enjoy the movie without seeing anything before. So basically without having seen the best scenes already in a trailer or having read in a magazine about the ending. Two weeks ago the sneak preview was just perfect from this POV. The movie shown was "DEFINITELY, MAYBE" and it has the cheeeeesiest poster of all times. A tipical chick flick, but I loved it somehow. (it's not bad to have really good looking actresses play in a movie).


The other good thing happened to me was stumbling upon a movie called "Battle Royale" on youtube about a class of 15 year olds who are forced to kill each other off on a remote island in a futuristic asian state. I thought the movie was new and so I ordered to book to be ready for it when it hits the movies. The book turned out to be 600 pages long, really readable and graphic, and I spent a couple of days (and nights) reading it. Then Ute told me the movie actually was old and not new and I checked it on wikipedia - it was true. It's also pretty interesting why the movie was never shown in the US or Germany - and after reading the book I am not sure I want to see the movie. Not the fact that 15 year old people are killed off, not even the fact that they are killed without reason, but the fact that they are murdered by their 15 year old friends is the part which makes people nervous. I totally understand, still can totally recommend the book - not for the beach but for lonely winter nights at home.


On Thursday we played football and for the first time in my life I felt I played really good. I actually scored a couple of goals - Ok, I also let some in, but that is normal. And about 40 minutes into the game my feet started to hurt like hell and I had to stop. I have these pains since I played football in Brussels a while ago on a weekend. Since then from time to time my left leg hurts like hell (after a day of snowboarding or a long run in the fitness center. But of course I never went to a doctor. So I ended up in the hospital on Friday morning to figure out what the hell was going on. After a quick touchy-touchy by the doctor and one x-ray which took 3 hours I was let go with a "heel spur" diagnose. (I figured this out via wikipedia by looking up Fersensporn - which is the same in German) So I got some little pillows to put into my shoe and an appointment with the doctor for the 1st of April to go back for a checkup. We will see ...

I have been wanting to sign up for a course on photography for years but never found a course. So I was very happy to see that there was a remaining slot for a weekend course open on short notice so I took my chance and signed up for a portraits course that started the same day. The course turned out to be about portrait photography in a studio and showed us how to use the flash in a professional way. There were two guys from Fotostudio Baumann, Arno and Robert, the owner. The participants were all kinds of people from around Frankfurt, some annoying, some cool. We spent Friday night with the equipment and got to learn how the flash works, how to measure the light, etc. We also set our cameras to ISO 200, 1/125 and 11 and were more or less asked to leave it like that for the whole weekend. The first thing we learned was how to use a second light (called Streiflicht in German) to create professional looking pictures like this one:


I also noticed that - similar to an experience on top of one of the nice Gaudí hauses in Barcelona last summer - I needed a new camera...

On Saturday we were shooting a model in the same setup and learned all kind of things about different styles to be used, called high-key and low-key, etc. It was a very interesting day and I learned a lot about light and its affects despite the fact that I doubt ever to posess any of the flash equipment we were dealing with in my life. Well you can rent the studio for 25 Euros per hour so you never know. Here is a picture of the setup used to shoot the pictures:


I met up with Jack and Alba for lunch after the course on Saturday, dropped Jack off at the airport and we had Celine over for dinner for the evening. The third day of the course we went to the Shirn Cafe for brunch and final discussion of the pictures. Even though I wasn't very happy with the pics on my camera, the actual paper photos looked pretty good. This was the first time I went for brunch in the Shirn Cafe, for 14 Euros it is a total rip-off unless you also want to have lunch there. The choice is extremely little, the waiters not particularly fast or caring... Later another place nearby, then I managed to use my Barometer vouchers for the first time this year in Teelirium on Berger Strasse with Simone, Mane and Kasturi, who came a little later. I went home afterwards and continued playing on my new Vista computer, that I bought from the employee shop for 333 Euros. I even managed to play C&C part 3 on it. Sueeeeeeet!

The week after went by without major news items. A crappy movie at the sneak (the only good part of it being Marisa Tomei walking around half naked most of the time) called before the devil knows you are dead, some nice Indian food on Tuesday night (really nice), swimming on Wednesday and coming to Amsterdam on Thursday evening. I read the entire "Die Zeit" in the train - though it was more boring than usual. I go back watch Amelie now...