Love Pug

Saw this guy in a shop window on my way back to the office mid-day today. He posed nicely for a moment, but then turned away and wouldn't turn back even when I pleaded with him and tapped on the window. But I guess, when you live in a boutique, you are used to being looked at and window tappers are status quo.

Playing again with photo editor for iPhone

Bear with me as I continue to experiment. After the downpour last
night, which, by the way, sounded like a lullaby as I slept and only
woke me for a moment sometime in the middle of the night when I
sleepily realized my bike was getting soaked, all the snails decided
to come out to the dry land and slime up the sidewalks. This one
blended right in and I almost stepped on him.

So...checking out photogrne for the iPhone. Only really critical
factor is that iPhone simply takes crappy crappy close-ups.

Signs Everywhere

One of the blogs I nip past every day is called "A Headline A Day" - yeah, you can find it over here. And some days i think the guy is channeling my brain. Shorter than a horoscope, his one headline every day is quite often something that really makes me stop and and think.

And the fact that some of his headlines seem somehow so close to what I might be thinking or feeling - maybe not on the day itself but sometime in the past - makes me recognize how on so many levels the things I think about or struggle with or contemplate or recognize are merely the same things that other people think about, stuggle with, contemplate or recognize. It's a humbling experience. Despite this, the headline a day often has a message worth spending time with - wondering how it applies to me and my life, if at all.

And some days, I don't have to even look for the official "Headline a Day" because there it is, on the street, right before me.


Although I wish it weren't written on gas guzzling monster jeep truck things...

Tiptoeing through the Baerlauch

I promise, I won't only write about food. It's just that the sunny weather this weekend and a strange cold that won't go away no matter how much I sleep, kept activity at least fairly limited and focused on soaking up (generating? i feel like a battery?) some vitamin D and relaxing.

So after the rather uninspiring squid on Saturday night, I turned to seasonal vegetables and herbs for Sunday. The Germans love their white asparagus, which I find pretty tasteless, mushy, and sorry, boring. But the green - those are another story completely. Toss them in olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and throw them in the oven (or better - grill them! i just don't have a grill), for a few minutes until they lose their crunch and you have one amazing spring vegetable.

And it was obviously time to do something with baerlauch ("bear garlic") which grows wild and profusely in the English garden - just a couple hundred meters from our apartment. So after the gym and a shower, i grabbed a blanket and a book and my bike and rode over there to relax and people watch. Lots of students hanging out, and kids playing soccer (football...i know..football), and women working on achieving the perfect summer glow...but really a good mix of everyone, including horses - everywhere - leaving evidence of their comings and goings.


So I spent an hour lying around staring at the sky, and then went and collected some Baerlauch, which is actually not a good substitute for regular garlic. It's pungent in a different way, somehow a bit milder. You know when baerlauch is in season here because when you walk or ride your bike through the english garden, you can smell it even if you can't see it.

So there you go - a few photos of what it looks like...




And while I might make some bread with it later this week, baerlauch spaetzle (the ever-present german equivalent of pasta), hit our plates next to a piece of salmon and those asparagus.


Getting ready for work now...

Squid Blastula

They were quite some work, cleaning the squid, boiling the bulgar,
making the stuffing, stuffing and closing them, and them cooking for
almost an hour. In the end, they were tasty but really nothing to blow
your socks off. Next time: more mint, more garlic, and...as much as I
don't like to use it, more salt.

Am at the gym at the moment, blogging from the iPhone as I peddle on
one of the exercise bikes, BUT, the sun is out and I intend to go laze
around the English garden in an hour and enjoy...and maybe work again???

Am also busy trying to link up all the various profiles in a way to
only post once and have the right network get the right information.
Need to put some more thought into this.

Music in Muenchen Passagen

What's nice about the upscale shops around Odeonsplatz here in muc, is
that on nice sunny spring days, when lots of tourists are out and
about, the Russian musicians all come out and set up their bands and
instruments in the covered passageways between the stores. This group
had a talented violinist. They played classical pieces like The Four
Seasons which they did jazzy interpretations of. I was riding by on my
bike and heard them so I stopped for ten minutes to listen. Then on to
The Blue Nile restaurant for dinner.

Sophie the beautiful and chubby cat

Playing with mobile blogging function and the cat waiting for dinner
feeling a bit fluey but not like swine. ;-) Thursday night malaise
hopefully will turn into Friday morning energy. Right Sophie?

Char kway teo

Testing blogger functionality from my phone. These are my favorite
Singapore noodles. Time to fire up the blog again maybe...

"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.
_____________________

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...