"V" is for Wireless

Ranjit is working with me on the consumer beverage social media project I am involved in at the moment. And thankfully he puts up with my picking on him. :-)

Berlin

I know it's been toooo long since I posted anything. This little clip felt like it might finally be worth putting up...

I'm in Berlin at the moment, helping out on a seminar during the Web 2.0 Expo event happening in this city...

Devan (from Jive software) and I were hanging out in the lobby going through our respective presentations when this guy - Christian - came up to us and asked for a spontaneous interview. And we reponded...very spontaneously! ;-)

Sapient Summer Party

I especially like the photo of our Creative Director, Andreas, in jail. ;-)
Actually, rather poor photo representation here - I just snapped a couple towards the beginning of *some* of my favorite people...but then got lazy as the evening wore on. Andreas (mine) showed up around 7:30 and we made some rounds, but then we both decided to head home at about 8:30. I heard that things continued until after midnight though...:-)

I Scream, You Scream, we all Scream Ice Cream

Today it is rather hot in Munich. It's about 87 degrees F. So Sapient ordered ice cream for everyone. :-) Nice.

India: Leh-Ladakh

Here we go. Finally a few more videos from India.
This round, just videos from Leh-Ladakh.
Often described as a moon-scape, Leh is the highest altitude desert in the world. The stark and barren landscape is dotted with mud-brick homes that blend into the sand-colored background.

We had some trouble adjusting to the altitude the first day. But that was planned into the trip to some extent. We just went to the hotel and slept for the first couple hours. I've never been to that kind of altitude before, so i didn't really know what to expect. Andreas has, so the side-effects of getting used to 3500 meters were at least somewhat familiar to him. The lower oxygen levels mostly meant I just tired much faster - climbing stairs, carrying bags, generally walking uphill...maybe not even really tired - we were both just a bit breathless. For those first four hours, it felt quite strange, I felt like I had to take an extra breath every view seconds to catch up somehow. Even when we were sleeping, it felt like I had to concentrate on remembering to breathe that extra breath.

The videos here are a mixed bag. We spent a day in Leh proper, and then went driving ...north west along the Indus river towards Pakistan. The following day we continued until we were within 10 kilometers or so of Pakistan (or the "line of control"). At that point, we were not allowed to continue driving. We visited a little village there called Dha, where we saw the descendants of an ancient Aryan tribe - who looked quite different from the Tibetan-heritage-looking people of Leh, both in terms of the facial features and in their traditional clothes.

We visited 3-4 monasteries, beautiful little fortresses of sorts built on hills, with HUGE golden Buddhas inside, that extended from the first story of the monasteries until the 3rd or 4th. Elaborate paintings covered the walls inside, something you'd never guess from the beige wastelands outside.

Leh-Ladakh - view from above, near a Japanese-built shtupa (spelling?)


Leh-Ladakh, walking around town, buddhist prayer ...cylinder (these were everywhere - and people would go up to them and spin them, as we understood, this was an act of prayer)


First night, eating dinner at a rooftop restaurant, Muslim call to prayer in the background.


Inside one of the monasteries



Also from inside one of the monasteries, looking out


Multi-colored mountains


Scary driving on the mountain roads

The Conference Bike

After the gym this morning, I was riding my bike home through the English garden (weather here is totally wonderful at the moment, so fears that summer wasn't going to really make it to Munich have abated somewhat...) and I came across this: the conference bike. I wish the six seats had been filled and the thing had been moving so I could have seen the concept in motion, but the 6 people who were using it had decided to take a break and have a drink at that moment.

Tracie...I think you'll like the concept. :-) We can add this to my collection of human-powered-vehicles-in-Munich blogs...

Crazy looking. Can you actually imagine having a little work outing on this thing?

India - a couple videos...more to come

Here we go, these take forever to process, but you can start to take a look. The project I started to try to edit these together is taking FOREVER. So I thought I should start to get a couple of the little phone cam videos up. Not bad quality really, for a phone. These are from my perspective...so...I am not in them, but will post photos as well in one of the next blogs.
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A rickshaw ride through old Delhi...
Felt very strange to have a human being pulling us around on the rickshaw - you get a bit of a sense of the look of the busy street in Old Delhi, pictures to come of the narrow alleys and stores. We were there on a Sunday, though, so quite a bit was closed.



The Oberoi Amar Villas Hotel - Poolside
Totally beautiful hotel where we stayed for two nights while we were visiting Agra. After we got there the first day (after a bumpy and jerky 5-hour car ride), we headed down to the pool to enjoy the weather (a comfortable 32 degrees or so) and the pool. The next morning at 6 am we went to visit the Taj Mahal. Again...photos to come.



Jaipur, the Amber Fort

Andreas got a touch of ...delhi belly (although in Agra) but was feeling somewhat better the second day in Jaipur. We visited the Amber Fort (a 360 degree view near the entry shown here.


Learning Indian Dance
Within the Jaipur Amber Fort, we came across a dance lesson with a bunch of kids. Was really fun to watch them. These are the younger girls, we got to see the older ones a few minutes later, but I didn't get them on video - and they were quite amazing.



Wind Palace
Also in Jaipur, the wind palace is actually just a facade. It was used by the palace women as a front from behind which to watch, without themselves being seen. Yes, that is Andreas saying "no thank you" to someone in the background...


Amarpal and Jinny's wedding vid 1
The ceremony lasted about 45 minutes, and during most of it, the guru simply chanted from the big book in front of him (the Sikh sacred text) and then towards the end, the bride and groom slowly circled him four different times...and then they were married. Yes, that is a sword in front of Amarpal. ;-)

EM: Germany vs. Croatia

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about India. I am working on something. Hopefully will have a post by Monday....

Meanwhile, we had a group showing of the Germany vs. Croatia game last night at work. Bunch of us gathered for pizza and beer and football....

I even took part in the betting: put 2 Euros down betting 3:2 Germany:Croatia.
Unfortunately, the Germans didn't play very well and well...lost....2:1...argh!

A few impressions...mini videos...from the evening:

That Kid Can Kick...


In which Ranjith totally avoids making a prediction...


Germans are quiet little mice when their team is not doing so well...

Back from India, Test Run Video Posting

We're back.
We had a wonderful time.
Will write long long post with lots of photos and videos over the weekend.
Here's a little test run on posting video...all mini videos were taken with my phone, which unfortunately dumped almost everything I captured for the first week, but was thankfully reliable thereafter...

As you will see by this video, we shared the road with a number of other vehicles and non-vehicles as we travelled from Delhi to Agra. :-)
Let's see what this looks like when it posts...
More soon.

Doggy School

Saw this guy on the way to lunch today. For the non-Germans, he's advertising doggy training on the front of his bike there. And his dogs indeed seem to be well-trained. :-) I need to work on training Sammy and Sophie to ride in a basket on my bike...i wonder if I should give him a call...

East Wind and Flickr

We had dinner tonight with Christian and Anna, Lucy and Lorenz at a yummy Chinese food restaurant in Munich called Ost Wind- East Wind. Lorenz was a dinosaur this time and Lucy was just plain lovely. :-) What was super impressive was the fact that the two of them were able to simply switch between three languages during the course of the evening. They spoke Chinese or English with their mom, German with their dad, a mix of German and English with us, and Chinese with the waitresses. Quite often a conversation would start out in one language, and then end up in another a few sentences later. Mind boggling.

Meanwhile, we're getting ready now for the trip to India in earnest. Everything is booked, and now it is just time to get any shopping and cat planning, etc. out of the way before we leave. We leave a week from Friday, on May 16, and land in Delhi on May 17, early in the morning. I'm told that the temperature in Delhi is hovering at about 43 degrees...celcius. I am more than a little nervous about this. But...hey, we'll just bring towels and extra t-shirts (or Kurtas...) everywhere. We'll be in Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Leh and Shimla. I have decided NOT to take a laptop for this trip, which should be a new experience.. ;-) Instead, the new mobile phone with a really really great camera in it, comes with, as well as an Ipod Touch. All I'd really like to do is occasionally check email and post a few photos as we go. To do so...I set up a Flickr account and have automated it to accept photos directly from my mobile phone. So..Julie snaps photo, Julie clicks the "post to web" button, and voila, photo uploaded directly to my Flickr account for you to see.

As an experiment, I uploaded a couple photos from tonights evening out directly to the account. Works really well. Now I just need a flat data tarif with flat roaming in India ....well, I guess you can't have everything.

You can find my Flickr account HERE.

We'll be in India from May 17 to June 5. Will likely get a blog or two in before we leave. But for the trip, count on following the action (unless I report otherwise in the interim) from the Flickr address.

Dumplings

Emily said that she wants me to write another entry on food. (She also said that the last blog was better because it had a theme to it. At which point I said that the theme was Singapore, not food. And she said that at least I posted on one topic consistently. But I say...this whole blog thing is teetering on oblivion anyway...so I am doing it as I want to...sigh. This sounds really mature.) Anyway, so I can give in though and do a food blog. Probably not so exciting for the Nathan women because they have seen/made/tasted this recipe ten thousand times, although this IS a very yummy variation.

Chinese (?) dumplings.
Taught to me by my first college boyfriend, who I newly learned lives somewhere in Idaho with his wife and three year old daughter, where he is a part time, amateur (but good!) folk musician and a full time...social worker, I think. I know this...because of...Facebook? No...not Facebook. I think Google.

The insides included (and so this is the new part..the new mix)
300 gms (about 2/3 of a lb) chopped salmon
about 3/4 cup soy beans
one large fat green/spring onion, chopped
1 chili, chopped fine (1/2 chili also enough)
about 3-4 tablespoons finely chopped mint
about 3-4 tablespoons finely chopped cilantro/coriander
about 2 teaspoons finely chopped ginger
about 1 tablespoon of vietnamese fish sauce
grated zest of a lemon (lime would be nice too)
couple splashes of oil (i used olive, which was fine) to hold things together

Mix it all together.

Make sure you have purchased dumpling skins. I like the round ones. Today's skins came...from Singapore, of all places.

Then here are pictorial directions on how to make them.

One step missing - the folding of the dumplings. Trick is to moisten one side of the skin with water and fold over the other side, being careful to press the air out. This is the hardest part of making these guys....takes some practice.

Also, the liquid in the pan is a broth. Fish broth is the best, but I used a vietnamese pho broth, which was also nice. In total, the dumplings should be browned for about 3 or 4 minutes - until brown - and steam fried with the broth for 1 or 2.

We ate them with a nice eggplant/mushroom asian-inspired side dish...also nice.

Oh, all photos taken with my new phone. Nokia n82. I have a love-hate relationship with the phone. Some aspects - camera - are great. But I wish it were an iPhone most of the time. :-( I could have bought the iPhone, but I am waiting for version 2. And I want a better camera than the iPhone offers...

It's not a "fill in blank", it's an attitude

Couple Weeks in Munich

It has been awhile, and actually, I am at work at the moment, so I can't really write. Am debating again if I should shut the blog down, or at least change it to a more "professional" blog. Meanwhile, I send so many emails to colleagues and former colleagues talking about what I am doing or some interesting article I read, that I wonder if it is simply better to post the messages. My personal life can mostly be followed on Facebook anyway, as my status messages change frequently enough that you know what I am doing just by checking things out there. Or Twitter. Although I am not great at keeping up with Twitter. Totally annoying Twitter.

At the moment, I have the pleasure of working in Munich. Currently booked to a project at O2 until the second week of May. (Then back to the UK for a week to work at BSkyB and then on to India for three weeks for VACATION.)

Some photos from this morning's client meeting...or rather, from the building in which this morning's meeting took place. :-) Really lovely. We had coffee together at the bar after the meeting. Can't complain about that. Will be working on site part time.

Easter weekend in Bodenheim

A four day weekend just ended here in Germany and everyone returns to work a bit sluggishly today, looking forward with anticipation to the month of May, when the Catholic church (at least here in Bavaria), rewards us with a bunch of (usually) Wednesdays or Thursdays off. The weather is not helping the malaise, as the sky makes a last attempt to spit out the remaining nastiness on us before hopefully realizing that we deserve better. Now. Shall I say that again?!?!?

Nonetheless, if you put on your rose coloured glasses (more like your rose coloured ski parka), you can ignore the frigid temperatures and enjoy the nice sunshine we had as we strolled through the vineyards of Bodenheim on Sunday afternoon with our niece Victoria snuggled away in her baby carriage and even roosters busy cockadoodledoing.





Victoria was baptized on Monday morning (Victoria Katharina Schimanski) along with two other babies during the course of a family service, which involved much snapping of fingers, clapping of hands, singing (me listening..as I do not know any of these German psalms..), and acting like you are a little seedling that grows up with lots of rain and sunshine (acted out by the congregation out there...). I was thinking Saul and Theo would definitely have liked getting up there in front of everyone and growing from seeds into plants...

While we were in Bodenheim, we stayed at a cute little vineyard that produces ...I don't know..a hundred different wines. A nice family owns and runs the whole operation, and the first evening we were there, Hans, Dorothee and I took advantage of the opportunity to sit in their cosy kitchen room and taste a dozen before we went to sleep. Andreas and I ended up buying a couple mixed cases - the vineyard makes a really stellar Riesling, and a Chardonnay that is not bad. The surrounding village must be totally gorgeous in the summer and fall harvest season. Quaint and lovely. We will have to go back in a few months.

Just came across this little YouTube ad for Beringer Vineyards in Napa Valley. Beautifully done. :-)

Money

Ok, I am distressed. But I have a solution.

I am distressed because of this:
Amsterdam currency exchangers won't take US dollars
Currency exchange outlets in Amsterdam won't to trade US dollars for euros because the value of the dollar is dropping so quickly they're afraid of losing money, even with the outlandish vigorish the sleazy little joints usually tack on.

The U.S. dollar's value is dropping so fast against the euro that small currency outlets in Amsterdam are turning away tourists seeking to sell their dollars for local money while on vacation in the Netherlands.

"Our dollar is worth maybe zero over here," said Mary Kelly, an American tourist from Indianapolis, Indiana, in front of the Anne Frank house. "It's hard to find a place to exchange. We have to go downtown, to the central station or post office."


and thankfully, I have a solution because of this:
How to make fake gold bars
Now that the economy is collapsing, investors are becoming more interested in gold. Here's an item from PopSci that says it wouldn't be too difficult to make convincing fake gold bars out of gold-plated tungsten (which costs $30 a pound compared to $12,000 a pound for gold).

"start with a tungsten slug about 1/8-inch smaller in each dimension than the gold bar you want, then cast a 1/16-inch layer of real pure gold all around it. This bar would feel right in the hand, it would have a dead ring when knocked as gold should, it would test right chemically, it would weigh *exactly* the right amount, and though I don't know this for sure, I think it would also pass an x-ray fluorescence scan, the 1/16" layer of pure gold being enough to stop the x-rays from reaching any tungsten. You'd pretty much have to drill it to find out it's fake."

Want one...

...but kitties would be too jealous i think.
Andreas says Myhase goes before this guy shows up. :-)
Am discussing with office colleagues...maybe we'll pool money to get one wandering around the office...
Sophie sounds a little bit like the dinosaur....when she's happy.



www.pleoworld.com

Quick Pics

Having a lovely time here in the UK...
Two nights ago went to a pub with the guys I am working with at the moment after work. There are Nick, David and Ralf. Bunch of David's friends from "outside work" and Nick's girlfriend joined us as well. They all went to see a movie afterward, but I was afraid I'd be dead tired the next day and begged out - would have gotten back to my little room after midnight most likely....

Last night ended up near Picadilly Circus with a colleague from the German office who is working on another project here in London. He wanted to eat Chinese food in China town but didn't know where to go. So I walked up to a Chinese woman on the street and asked for a recommendation. And...she gave us a great recommendation. The waiters there suggested a really yummy dish of eel in a honey and black pepper sauce.

Finally, a shot of the tube this morning, which was a TRIAL. It took me 1.5 hours to get to work, which was ridiculous. I had to wait for about 5 trains to go by before I could get on one that wasn't full!!! wow. London is a beehive in the morning and evening during rush hour. You can barely move, but somehow everything seems to be a well-coordinated system (when it doesn't break down) of streams of people buzzing their way to and from work...

Deja (%&$$%#§"$) Vu

Yesterday, on the way to London. I thought that last week was trying on my patience with all the bumping from one flight to the next and then sitting around the airport for 5 hours. Ha.

This time:
In taxi on way to airport, collegue also headed to London on an earlier flight calls to tell me first 1) his flight is cancelled, then 2) my flight is delayed and then....during course of conversation, 3) my flight is cancelled. Great.

Got to airport, got on next available flight scheduled for two hours later.

Went to lounge to work. (Remember the lounge? If not...just look at last blog. Imagine me sitting there...again.)

Next (new) flight delayed...and delayed....and delayed. (Weather in London yesterday was horrific - lots of flights cancelled and delayed all day.

Finally, got on a flight around 3 pm that actually left the ground.

As we were landing, plane was shaking so badly that pilot decided it was too dangerous to land and pulled the nose back up and let us circle for another 30 minutes until storm calmed down.

Finally down on the ground at around 4 pm. Account Manager decided to have me fly to Heathrow in order to save some money (rather than the more optimally placed London City Airport). Which meant a minimum 1.5 hour commute into work. I called the office and asked the team if they still wanted me to come in. Answer: don't bother.

Oh well. Today is more productive. And as one of my favourite bloggers writes a week ago: Travelling is Fun. ;-)

Lovely photos from the London Tube as I was tubing into Victoria station. You get an idea of how great the weather was. Munich, on the other hand, was gorgeous yesterday.

Strike!!!

Well, I can't say I wasn't warned....

A huge union here in Germany, Verdi, which I guess most airport personnel belong to, as well as various public transportation employee groups (train drivers, bus drivers, etc.), has been battling it out on wage issues and declared that they would strike this week - likely on Wednesday. Andreas heard it on the radio on Monday morning.

And today is Wednesday. And I am flying to Duesseldorf today. So I dutifully changed my flight the first time last night when I heard my 8:50 am flight was cancelled. And I checked the airport website before leaving this morning for my 10:35 am flight. I got to the airport and was met with the bitter news that my second flight had been cancelled.

Got in line to find out options, calling travel agency while I waited. Travel agency put me on another airline for a 12:05 flight. I left the line, went to terminal 1 to jump on that flight. On the way, passed lots of strikers marching around airport blowing whistles...


Got to next airline to check in. Waited in line. Was told at the front that next airline had cancelled thier 12:05 flight. Called travel agent. Rebooked for a 15:05 flight. Actually have a boarding pass in my hand. Am now working in airport lounge and crossing fingers that I will be able to get on an airplane later.

Update later if I get bumped again. Probably will just go home.

But I am getting a lot done at the nice quiet airport lounge, so this is really not so bad. Maybe I should come work here every day....

Cerebration 2008

I've been giving pointers to one of the NUS teams that have been competing in this year's Cerebration contest (National University of Singapore's Business Case competition, the world's largest business school case competition...).

And they just made the finals. :-)
I got the announcement from one of the organizers on Facebook last night.

Off to Singapore the last week of March to watch? ....Am thinking about it....maybe NUS will sponsor a plane ticket....

Lang Lang

I don't know.

Will try again...

Although this may crash and burn right away. I start a really tough project on Monday with a lot of travel. So I am not sure how much time I have.
____________________

I am VERY excited about Sunday. Because of that photo there.



On Tuesday I was listening to a favorite pianist - Lang Lang - his newest album is called Dragon Songs and has compositions he wrote that are somehow a fusion of an Asian/Chinese sound and what I know of as traditional Western/European classical music. They are really great.

On a whim, I googled him so I could watch a few videos of him on You Tube, and in the process figured out (by looking at a couple other links) that he is playing in Munich on Sunday night. We've tried to get tickets in the past, but he's always sold out before we get a chance to buy. So I figured it would be an exercise in futility to even bother looking. But in fact...it was not. There were 5 seats left. He's playing at the Gasteig - a concert hall which is a 5 minute walk from where I work. And basically it was a 2 and a half minute run when I saw there were a few tickets still available. (After a 20 second phone call to the husband "honey, can we blow a whole bunch of money on tickets? yes? ok, great. bye.") I got to the ticket counter, and asked for tickets. The guy shook his head. "I don't think there is anything left." Me: "I just checked online. 2 minutes ago. There are tickets." He pulls up his screen. Surprise. Indeed. 5 tickets left. Some of the best seats in the house. I cringed at the price and handed over the credit card.

So....looking forward to Sunday night. :-) He will play mostly classics, but the last bullet on the program suggests he might play something from Dragon Songs, which I really look forward to.

Here he's playing a piece (Liszt/Horowitz, Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2) that we will hear on Sunday night. I love watching his face as he plays. He's so emotional and funny and it's so transparent, that it makes listening to the music even more of a pleasure when you can "see" what he is thinking to some extent.

Losing Blog Steam

I am losing interest. Or perhaps past tense is more honest.

I like to write. I think there are interesting things to tell you. Or tell someone anyway. But this model isn't working for me. I know...it's my fault too. I have to actually write something worthwhile. But I have this mixed audience and everyone seems to have different interests. It was a strange model to begin with. It worked more in Singapore where everything was new, fresh, different and it didn't really matter who was reading - there was something there for everyone. More importantly, these days, I am a bit afraid (maybe the wrong word - I am feeling a little bit too protective about) what I am really thinking about, which is really the problem here. So what you end up getting is watered down nothingness. I do understand...it's hard to comment on that. But then we are simply left with nothing. Sad, but true. At least for now. We shall see what happens later.

Falke...Marienplatz

Was at an interesting event the other night at the Rathaus at Marienplatz on Monday. Mobile Monday - an interesting forum where professionals in the mobile industry come together and talk about their projects, network with one another, etc. The event this past Monday featured some interesting talks. Google was there with a short presentation on Android. Seemed to be interesting for the press who were snapping photos. On the way there, I walked past Ludwig Beck, a big department store at Marienplatz. Falke was sponsoring a live fashion show of some of their new products in the window. A crowd was gathered to watch the models walk around in Falke underwear....couldn't help but take a snap.

Rocket Launcher in the House!

omg, and it is aimed at me. GASP!

Super Geek Day

Doing home office today. Hoping to be a little more productive than I was yesterday. Yesterday was "thinking" day for me on my project. But didn't really come to the conclusions/solutions I was hoping for. So today need to get a move on.

I really am using almost every device on the desk in some way. It's not just because I want to look like a super geek. ;-)

Sophie is helping.