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San Pedro de Atacama

2007-08-13T11:06:00.000-07:00

Like a whirlwind my time in Chile is coming to an end and I realize that I have not been keeping up with my postings - shame on me! I am actually flying back to the US today, but fearing that things will get even more chaotic once I get there I have decided to at least post a few pictures.

This first set is from a weekend trip to "the driest place on earth" the Atacama desert, situated about 1,300KM north of Santiago. Atacama was on my "must visit" list for Chile and I was not disappointed -- it is for sure the most interesting place I have been to in Chile. Why? I guess because it is a kind of landscape I have never seen anywhere else - although truthfully it is not one landscape, but rather a series of amazingly diverse and unique landscapes all located within ~100KM of the little town of San Pedro. I would have liked to have spent 4-5 days here in order to see them all, but alas this is a working stay! But we did get to see quite a few and below are some of the highlights:

The church in San Pedro, notice the detached bell tower something they used to do in this region to respect local customs of female/masculine deities.

Salar de Atacama -- a lagoon in the middle of a salt field.

Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley)

Valle de la Luna Sunset.

Atacama Cacti.

Team Endeavor at a local San Pedro hot spot - they had a huge open fireplace so for once it was actually hot -- this is at the end of the day that we began at 6AM, minus 12 Celcius, at 4,300 meters in order to see a geyser field at its sunrise best.

Entering Valle de Marte or Muerte...

Beautiful views everywhere

Local friends: Llamas!

Leaving the valley on Sunday night we had one of the most beautiful sunsets i have ever seen - unfortunately taking pictures out of the window of a moving bus doesn't really work that well.

Elqui Valley & La Serena

2007-07-21T14:40:00.000-07:00

Monday the 16th was another public holiday in Chile, meaning time for another trip! This time a road trip about 500KM north of Santiago to the coastal town of La Serena and to the Elqui Valley, known for its "spiritual energies", observatories and hippies! The latter in particular won my heart over, because it reminded my of all the crazy, happy people back in Berkeley and because it was everything that grey-clad Santiago is not. Elqui Valley, and in particular its little main town Pisco Elqui are now officially my favorite places in Chile :)

Entering Elqui Valley

Tololo Observatory

Gema, Carlos and our gem of a miniature rental car

View from Tololo

The Elqui Valley is famous for its very dark and clear skies and is thus home to several international observatories. These are only open for visits during the day, as they are used for research at night, nonetheless we decided to tour one of them, Tololo, and the tour was well worth it for the beautiful views provided from the top of the mountain that the observatory is located on. At night we did visit the small Mammalluca observatory that has been built especially for tourist visitors, so we did get the chance to enjoy extraordinarily clear views of the milky way, the southern cross and even 4 of Jupiter's moons!

We spent a bit of time (unfortunately not enough!) hiking around the valley during the day as well, enjoying the views and the dry desert colors that just kept getting better as the day came to a close.

Sunset

First stars are coming out, if you find Venus in this picture you win a prize!

Finally, The Elqui Valley is also known as the home of Pisco (the spirit), so we did go on the obligatory tour of the Capel Pisco distillery and had the distinct pleasure of making friends with Ruperto, Capel's token pisco donkey... (more pictures of that may follow later).

Our Pisco Elqui Cabaña, night sky views from the deck included

The Valley, which in summer, during the wine growing season, is covered in green.

The mandatory flower shot - love those colors!

Ski Day!!

2007-07-21T14:24:00.000-07:00

Sunday, two weeks ago, we (Carlos, Gema & I) set out to test the famous Chilean slopes, heading out for El Colorado, one of the resorts that are within 30 miles of Santiago for a day of snow and fun.

The weather was sub-optimal, very foggy and cloudy in the morning, but got better later in the day and the snow was amazing. The rumors of abundant, dry, powder are indeed true. We spent most of the morning on the groomed runs, but in the afternoon I ran into Eric, a Canadian from BC, who had already located some of the best powder spots and was looking for company.

The afternoon was awesome! Most impressive was that we were still getting first tracks at 4PM in the afternoon - probably unthinkable everywhere else, but maybe not quite so surprising in a location where the national minimal wage per month is $90, while the price of a lift ticket is $55 (US dollars), food for thought.

If time allows we might try to get in a day or two at Portillo (the supposedly "bigger and better" resort while we are here) - the snow is certainly worth it, but in all honesty the getting to the mountain part itself was a bit of an ordeal: Imagine a complete chaos of a gazillion mini buses, screaming people selling stuff everywhere - pulling your hair, sleeves, clothes to do so, endless waits for everything -- in the end the 25 mile journey took from 7AM to 11AM! So, for my part I might prefer more classic Chilean sights during the rest of my time here, but I am very glad we went and I would very much recommend the Chilean snow for anyone needing a summer ski fix!

Back in White

2007-07-21T14:19:00.000-07:00

Got tired of the rainforrest theme, so the blog is back to my beloved serene white - aaah!

Tango!!

2007-07-07T10:42:00.000-07:00

What better way to celebrate blog post #100 than with a tango video from Buenos Aires?! I shot this at the Tango show we went to at Cafe Tortoni, and since uploading it to youtube i have discovered that about 525 other people did the same thing, what a waste of bandwidth and information. Oh well, this one is my very personal Tortoni video, which also features the great head of hair of the big texan dude in front of us...

Everyone has a friend in... Buenos Aires!

2007-07-04T19:23:00.000-07:00

Went to Buenos Aires last weekend for a three day weekend with my Endeavor friends Gema and Carlos. The B.A visit turned in to an in-official Endeavor eMBA/BCG-Madrid-Alumni summit, as we met up with two other Spanish MBA students, Antonio and Joan, as well as another Endeavor intern Eric (from John Hopkins) and his class mate Leela... and this was just the beginning as our group kept growing and growing due to the fact that everyone brought a list of must-contact friends of friends, too many for me to list by name (and even remember) but enough to ensure that we were constantly cruising through the city in a group of at least 12 people, diving in to the wonder that is night life in Buenos Aires where people are (still) partying in the streets at 7AM despite it being 0 degrees celcius...

I fell in love with Buenos Aires quite rapidly - the city is, as I suspected, to Santiago what Prague is to Budapest or Copenhagen is to Århus: the twice as hip, fun and lively role model. It left me with a with big big smile on my face and desire to come back right away or simply every weekend from now on... aaaah Buenos Aires!

Crossing the Andes, heading two hours west from Santiago to Buenos Aires.

Part of the BA sightseeing crew: Joan, Carlos & Gema (not everyone made it out of bed early enough to also see the city by daylight...)

The famous obelisk, somewhere, lost in the background...

Tango show at Cafe Tortoni.

Afternoon in La Boca (where the spanish and italian immigrants used to settle fresh off the boat, also home to the Boca Juniors soccer team).

La Boca pride.

Valparaiso & Viña del Mar

2007-06-26T19:17:00.001-07:00

Went to Val Paraiso and Viña del Mar on a day trip last Sunday. These two cities are situated on the coast (Pacific Ocean) about 1.5 hours from Santiago. Valparaiso used to be an important stop on the route to the US West Coast back in the days before the Panama Canal, needless to say that is a while ago and thus the city is a bit run down these days, albeit full of very charming old houses painted in bright colors, a true camera feast...

View towards Viña from the hills in Valparaiso.

The harbor.

Faded but colorful local beauties (enlarge to see green eye shadow....)

Casas coloradas...

Carlos, Gema & modern art...

Contrast everywhere.

¡Hola Chile!

2007-06-19T04:25:00.000-07:00

The time has come to introduce you all to my new temporary home: Santiago de Chile. Founded in 1541, Santiago is situated in Chile's central valley, surrounded by mountains over 5,000 meters tall (-- that's over 16,000 feet) Santiago is about 120KM from the coast on one side and 50KM from the border to Argentina on the other (yes, Chile is that long, narrow country...). Santiago is home to roughly 6 million people (out of a total Chilean population of 15million) and is know for having some of worst smog in the world during fall and winter (aka now).

I am in Chile to complete my MBA summer internship. I was sent here by a not-for-profit organzation called Endeavor, whose goal it is to support high impact entrepreneurs in emerging markets, in order to help of grow/boost local economies. My job is helping an IT resource company named Kibernum develop a new business strategy that will help them "grow to the next level".

Since I arrived about 10 days ago, so many things have happened that recounting them all would be impossible, but here are the highlights of what I have learned about Santiago, Chile, the Chileans etc. so far:

Chile
Is at the end of the world. It is strange but it someways it is really noticeable that there is "nowhere else to go from here". The streets of Santiago this past Sunday were showered in an eerie hazy blue light, as the sun was trying to get through the smog and I wandered through several neighbourhoods, that though mentioned in all tourist guides were devoid of people. Coming from tourist mecca SF, it is a bit odd to visit "city highlights" and run into, say, three other people... I speculate that this may be different in the summer but who knows: over lunch I met "Gavin" -- the gay trinidad-tobagan son of an indian engineer & a british homemaker, who comes here regularly for the happening gay district (& with whom I had a log discussing about how bad the smog is for your complexion...) and he claims that it is always like this. While eerie, there is also a certain beauty to it, the same way that Scotland or Vancouver Island are quietly beautiful...

Santiago
Was beamed here from nothern Italy. The guide books all say it, and they don't lie: Santiago is a lot like cities in nothern Italy. I sometimes feel like I am in Florence on a December day. But the very best comparison I think is Innsbruck (Austrian Alps) which has a similar mountain setting. That said, Santiago is of course entirely its own, which my next point attests to:

"La Contaminacion"

Smog! Is a serious problem here - seriously - just look at the big yellow blanket hanging over the city in this picture. Asked some people last week what the city/country was planning to do about the problem, and the reply was "well, sometimes we take the bus.... Or when it gets really bad, certain cars aren't allowed to drive." Still trying to find out if there is any kind of long term plan to solve the problem, as it really doesn't do much for Santiago's general level of attractiveness, nor for the health of its population which afterall counts 6 of Chile's 15 million people.

Weather
Chilly! 'tis the winter here after all, that said I think my Danish genes are finally coming to my rescue, I actually don't think it is that cold (it fluctuates between 2-10C/35-50F) despite the fact that several Chileans have explained to me how the Chilean cold is the worst in the world... IMHO, the only reason that they could possibly think that, is because they have never experienced wind-chill. Wind-chill is the Chuck Noris of cold -- all you Scandinavians and Canadians know what I am talking about....

Food
The Chilean kitchen is not well known around the world. There might be a reason for that. I am eating my way through the local specialties and have so far, for my personal taste, encountered more misses than hits. I will note however that I haven't exactly visited any gourmet establishments or eaten seafood yet, so this opinion is subject to change. There is no imminent risk of starvation however, they have wonderful breads, cakes and ice-cream (to be had everywhere even now in the midst of winter - the mall close to my work has no less than 7 largish ice cream parlors...) and there are plenty of US chains.

Update: since originally writing this I have discovered what I so far believe to be the best thing about the Chilean kitchen: Italian food. I have to say that that have extraordinarily fine Italian cooking here, which should most certainly tide me over the next 8 weeks...

Drinks!
Wine is sublime, cheap and available in large quantities are variety everywhere - yeah!! I confess to not having had a Pisco Sour yet, which probably makes me a looser, but there is something about going out on your own, in a foreign place, to consume a kind of hard liquor you've never had before that just hasn't seemed like a great idea. Thursday however, is our first Endeavor intern happy hour aka Pisco Sour time for me...

Update: as obvious from picture to the right, the Pisco Sour enigma has been solved...

Muzak
Long time readers of my blog might remember my entry on "jingles in Tokyo" from last year. No jingles in Santiago, but muzak is omnipresent. In case you ever wondered how artists like Pet Shop Boys or Phil Collins are surving these days, I suspect that their main source of income might be Chilean muzak royalties. The all time winner in this category so far was the pan flute rendition of Bruce Springsteen's "Touger than the rest" that I heard in the metro the other night...

Friends

Are few and far between. One of the downsides of doing an internship far from home is that, well, you don't really know anyone... Luckily there are two other Endeavor interns in Santiago, a spanish couple from MIT, Gema and Carlos, who have turned out to be darling and fun people. And of course there are people like "Gavin" who provide random short term entertainment...

Sights
It is almost time to wrap up for today, so without much further ado, I'll leave you with the random Santiago tourist shot. By now I have actually managed to see quite a bit in a few marathon weekend days, such as:

Santiago from above - this time with slightly less smog...

Nobel Prize Winner Pablo Neruda's Santiago House.

The odd shot from the San Francisco church garden - this is where the city was founded.

The presidential palace at La Moneda and with its Salvador Allende statue (Allende was the Chilean president before the Pinochet coup on Sept. 11 (no joke) 1973.)

Que Frio! Santiago, Chile, 5:48AM, 3º Celcius, 37º Fahrenheit

2007-06-12T09:06:00.000-07:00

Touched down in Santiago this morning at 5:48AM - it was early, dark and cold, making it seem a bit like landing on another planet after having left Berkeley on a beatiful summer day yesterday. My employer had kindly offered to be there to chauffeur me to where I am now: an "apart hotel" downtown which will be my home for the next 10 weeks. He was also kind enough to suggest that I take the entire day off, to rest and settle in, which I of course (wanting to be "eager beaver intern") have declined.; In a few hours I will be heading to the office for an afternoon meet and greet, first however I am about to venture out under the yellow Santiago sky to locate my nearest Starbucks. Yellow, you may ask, to which I can only say: the smog is real - if you've been to Shanghai, multiple that by 2-3. It adds a nice Blade Runner-ish touch, keeping up the other-world sensation...

Riding Off Into the Sunset...

2007-06-06T15:32:00.000-07:00

We're done. Our project for the Mamiraua Institute has been completed with what was meant to be a final presentation of our results this afternoon. In sad reality the meeting we had scheduled in order to present to the four key directors of the institute, ended up being canceled last minute, as only one of them was able to attend in the end. We decided to post-pone rather than spend two hours presenting 90 pages of writing and 50 power point slides, in english, to the one person on the management team who speaks only portuguese...

Not that I am really all that sad about not being able to present - we were crunching up until the last minute and it is sort of nice to just get to hand over the DVD roms with the final product and relax. Of course it would also be great to get feedback from our clients, since however our expectations for what it will look like are somewhat low (we are not telling them what they want to hear) I don't really mind waiting until later in the year for that part.

Feels GREAT to be done and in a few minutes we will head out for a little barbecue/birthday/goodbye celebration that our new-found best friend Cesar (who was our guide when we went to the reserve) has organized for us.

This might be the end of our internet access in Brazil -- tomorrow we head back to Manaus (capital of Amazonas state) in order to be able to catch our Saturday flight back to SFO via Miami. [The local Tefe-Manaus flight only operates twice a week which is why we are leaving so early]. Hopefully we'll get to do some last cool sightseeing stuff in/from Manaus, personally I wouldn't mind another river tour as I feel that just haven't gotten to enjoy it quite enough. I know we keep repeating this but it really is AMAZING!

Oh well, almost time for the next adventure, I am starting to get mentally prepared for the fact that by this time next week i will be in Santiago, Chile working at my summer internship company Kibernum. Crazy!

Nano vs. Beetle

2007-06-06T15:14:00.000-07:00

Everyday while we've been here I have gone on two-three daily walks around the (beautiful) compound that surrounds the offices that we have been working in here, in order to get a minimal bit of exercise, as it is not possible to run/walk here otherwise due to the a. the heat and b. the freak show-factor/danger of being a blond foreign woman running around Tefe.

The walks have been a great way to observe the abundant local flora and fauna [small aside at this point: one of the coolest thing about this place is how everything just grows everywhere. Out on the river we saw a huge island that had "grown in" over the last few years, the water is that rich with sediments and this gives me quite high hopes that a lot of the deforested Amazon rain forest can and will grow back given the chance to do so.]-- in particular i have developed a keen interest* in this one species that I have lovingly dubbed "the largest beetle I have ever seen"... So when my slacker team mates (no walks for them) refused to believe me, I had to bring back photo evidence, which led to the shot below. See for yourself, it's Nano vs. Beetle!!

* In case you are wondering "why the beetle"? The sad answer is that there happened to be a large number of formerly-live ones around - whereas the extraordinarily beautiful blue butterflies for example are extremely hard to get a closer look at due to their fleeting habits...

Cold Showers

2007-06-05T16:18:00.000-07:00

The little joys of being in Tefe: one of them is the challenge of the ice cold morning shower. Cold showers may sound like a good idea considering the tropical climate, but due to the fact that the air conditioner actually does work (80% of the time at least) our rooms are mostly cold in the morning, which makes jumping from the cold room into the cold shower rather grueling. As it turns out everyone of us has been working on developing the perfect technique for dealing with this problem over the last two weeks. In the video below (which unfortunately is rather dark, so it is really mostly a sound file) shot at Steve's birthday celebration yesterday night, Steve explains, after a few beers, how he developed the perfect approach...

Never let Women Cook...

2007-06-03T15:08:00.001-07:00

This weekend has been a bit on the dull side as we are essentially just working like crazy, cranking out what is on track to become a 60-100 page report with analysis and recommendations for our clients. We've come up with some good results and are now just trying to survive the tedious typing part - But since this is much too boring to talk about I figured I'd post some more photos from last weekend's reserve adventure instead.More specifically the results of the little cooking adventure Moriah and I went on after the five of us (team course + our guide and new best friend Cesar) had throughly tested (and approved of) the EcoLodge's Caipirinha making abilities. After coming back to our little floating research station (no - we did not get to stay in the fancy lodge) we realized that we were practically out of food and decided to try to make an american classic: Grilled Cheese Sandwiches.Easy enough, right? Let's just say that i think there is something different about how toast reacts to butter under certain levels of humidity, cleaness of the air, sei la. The boys were not impressed and as a result they have sworn to never let us cook again. Hooray!!!

Into the Wild -- Entering the Enchanted Forest

2007-05-29T06:13:00.000-07:00

The blog is back in business or we are back from business - or... I am not sure I know any more myself... it has been a busy last couple of days, we are getting into the meat of our project and are spending tons of time lost in big spreadsheets rather than lost in the big forest.

However, the past weekend - did give us chance to get our there and feel truely lost - in a good way - sort of like being at the end of the world in a magical landscape where everything is just quiet, beautiful and alive at the same time.

We sailed up river about an hour or two to get into the actual reserve - passing parts of the river that seemed to "bubble" with the presence of little fish, soon to be followed by hundreds of birds trying to catch said fish, followed by dolphins going in for the clean up.

We went to a little village, visiting some of the people the reserve is trying to help and witnessed a very different lifestyle (showers in the river, while cleaning fish at the same for example) and finally got the visit the EcoLodge for drinks and giggles, to canoe 3 kilometers in near complete silence through the Varzea (flooded forest -- the water level here varies by 12meters between wet & dry seasons!) and finally spend the night in a floating research station, waiting for the pet aligator Sophia to join us for breakfast...

Entering the Wild...

Ribeirinho ("river-dweller") housing - note how beautiful it is here when the sun comes out -- not to mention the resulting heat and scalp burn!.

"Cell phone"???

Never thought the Amazon could be like this - but it was in multiple places - just dead quiet and looking like a big beautiful (green) mirror.

Brazil Nut tree.

Passion Fruit flower.

Our Canoe guide Geraldo about to take us into the the Varzea.

Inside the flooded forest - the light is amazing in there, but unfortunately very hard to capture well.

A beautiful day coming to an end.

Beautiful Bandaids

2007-05-24T13:42:00.000-07:00

Frustrated with our project today: no-one wants to invest in making money and everyone wants to simply receive money - arg. I've named it the beautiful band-aid approach: refusing to look at the root causes of financial problems in favor of waiting for beautiful monetary presents that will make things work in the short run - double arg!!

Dolphin Video

2007-05-23T13:13:00.001-07:00

Stevie Ray shot this nice little video of a jumping dolphin when we were out on the river the other day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIP4tHE1W_o

Coincidentally we have just gotten news that we will be going to the heart of the reserve this week - I am incredibly excited about this opportunity and you should be expecting many more great photos and videos after that...

Introducing my Partners in Crime

2007-05-23T09:17:00.001-07:00

Figured I should take the time to introduce you to the people who are my "three best friends" over these next couple of weeks. First (pictured left) we have Stephan K. Stephan is our team's "Token Brazilian" - born in Rio and before coming to Haas living in Sao Paulo, he is obviously fluent not only in Portuguese but also in the little nuances of Brazilian office life, negotiations, communications and so forth - all of which has proven invaluable! Stephan also happens to be the President of the Haas Soccer Club and is a master of the "Brazilian way of life" in general -- he keeps the group together and in good spirits at all times, with frequent encouragements to "relax - this is brazil", excellent cocktails and skillful selection of best places to consume grilled meat. On a side note: Stephan has promised to appear on this blog as a ghost writer - stay tuned!!!

"River Princess" Moriah is a former Ohio native, turned San Francisco native, turned Hawaiian native and our team's "Kim Bassinger in Out of Africa" look-a-like (tropical humidity does magic things to curly hair!). Moriah also has the special honor(?!) of being my room mate as has provided extraordinary services when it comes to tugging in mosquito nets, sanitizing floors (with lavender scent), employing mid-night air condition management, not to mention much laughter and general entertainment. She insists on trying to teach the locals french and is currently stalking our local high school neighbors, not-so-secretly, coveting their cute school uniforms.

Last but not least we have Steven, aka Steve, aka Stevo, aka Stevie Ray, aka Stevao. Steve is our secret Illinois weapon, who with tricks and spanish learned from a three year peace corps stint in bolivia, continuously manages to outsmart the locals and cause the rest of the team to drop the chicken (see Moriah's blog for an explanation of this term). Steve will turn 30 (yes the big 3-0) during our trip and is in for a very local style hair-cut and a largish amount of Caipirinhas to celebrate the event. Steve is also married to the lovely Kenia who is currently partying it up in Berkeley with Stephan's wife Fabi...

Imagens (Pictures)

2007-05-22T07:08:00.001-07:00

Flying in to Tefe - this is the Amazon!

View over the town, river and main square from our hotel

Port of Tefe

Port of Tefe

Girl in favela housing

Hitting the river, Maiken and Moriah, with our local boat driver / guide Eunilson

Maiken's favorite cloud...

Ribeirinho ("river dweller") housing

Amazon style pig farming

De-forestation

Local boaters

View from the Mamiraua institute (over Lake Tefe)

Sunset over lake Tefe

Bunking in Tefe style -- Princess Moriah under the mosquito net

Team Course still going strong after our first day of work (Stephan, Moriah, Maiken, Steve)

Our Work begins...

2007-05-22T07:05:00.000-07:00

We made it to the Mamiraua Reserve offices yesterday afternoon and received our first massive information dump. The research center is very impressive: a series of brand new buildings, situated on a large compound, right by the Lago Tefe (see pictures). The have maybe 50 people working there and to be honest the run a pretty impressive operation, addressing issues everywhere from community development, sustainable agriculture, sustainable fishing, sustainable forest use, health care and education, communication and broadcasting of news (to and from the reserve), ecotourism and and and... The offices themselves are fully inline with any wired, high tech office space I have worked in before and the people working here are highly educated scientists who know their stuff. It was almost a bit of a reverse culture shock to all of a sudden run in to 50 super smart people, in a high tech office, in this very remote place where most of our conversations with the local population so far has revolved around where to get the best rice, beans and beer... I'm feeling quite humble and honored that they are looking to us for help in shaping their future -- however they, admittedly, are scientists and not business people/marketers, and they are currently clearly under selling themselves, so hopefully we can indeed add some value. It will be a tough challenge tough - we heard a lot of "been there, done thats" today - the list of cons seems for everything seems long, while the pro-list is short - alas, I guess that is why we are here!

Deep in the Amazon... Arriving in Tefé

2007-05-21T07:34:00.000-07:00

We are here! We have arrived at our IBD (International Business Development) project destination in Tefé, Amazonas, Brazil [click here for google map...]. Tefé is quite literally in the middle of nowhere - situated about ~500 kilometers up river, west, of Manaus (capital of Brazil´s Amazon province) Tefé is home to about 50,000 people + a significant number of Urubu birds (large trash eating vultures), stray dogs and crazy motor-cyclists. It is also the gateway to the Mamiraua Reserve, the beneficiaries of our project, which consists in developing a plan for how they can become more financially self-sustaining (and thus reduce their dependency of government funding), through increased monitization of assets like locally produce handi crafts, eco tourism and a variety of fundraising intiatives.

While there is not much exciting to be said for the town of Tefé, being right on the Amazon in the middle of the rain forest is AMAZING. We chartered a boat yesterday afternoon (Sunday) to take us out on the river and it is simply incredible. The sheer size of the river (width + amount of water in it) and the fact that all you see until the end of the horizon is either water or endless, lush, green is just very, very cool -- made me want to immediately buy a hammock and pitch in in a hut or under a tree somewhere to just get closer to all of it. Hopefully we will get the chance to do something along those lines. While Tefé is the reserve gateway, and where its administration sits, there is a research station in the midst of the reserve (about another hour up river) that we will hopefully be spending some time at while we are here. We took a ton of pictures and movies yesterday, which I will try to post momentarily - currently we have not be able to access the admin office yet, so we are confined to internet cafe web access.

In other good news - we have been having a lot of fun as a team (I am here with three other Haas students: Moriah, Stephan & Steve). In order to maintain a civilized atmosphere, despite being "in the wild tropics", we have decided to follow the british colonial example and have instituted an end of day cocktail hour for example. And we are doing our utmost to make sure that we try and taste every possible brazilian food delicacy of which there are quite a few (beef and fried stuff being the stables).

Well - we are off to try to get some work done - we are still getting used to the Brazilian work customs, as such being asked to come to the office at 2.30 in the afternoon on our first day was a bit surprising, but hopefully we can start getting into the "meat" of things soon.

One last note: make sure to check our Moriah´s blog as well (link posted on the left) as she is also "reporting life from Tefé".

Até logo!

School Done

2007-05-09T22:09:00.000-07:00

Latest Update: I an amazing tour de force I managed to also wrap up my last two exams with 72 hours of finishing the Tri - not bad eh? This means that I have officially survived my first year at Haas - yay!! Does it make me feel stress free for a change? well not entirely, we are leaving for our Brazil consulting project in a week and as always there are a million things to do before then, including a 2 major end of year parties, 2 days of rafting and a move (yes - another one!) to the house I will be living in starting fall semester. Alas, the one step at a time method seems to be working well - all will be good in the end!

Tri Done

2007-05-09T21:59:00.000-07:00

I finished my very first triathlon this past Sunday! I was a "sprint" (1/2 mile swim, 15 miles bike, 4 mile run) taking place in Napa Valley along the lovely Lake Berryessa. As seen from the picture we had a whole Haas crew racing and some did quite well (coach Matt won the race!) I was just very happy to finish in 2 hours and 27 minutes...

Please welcome the 2007 edition...

2007-01-15T22:04:00.000-08:00

Today is the official last day of winterbreak, tomorrow it will be back to Haas and MBA life. Here's a short summary of what happened during break:

I moved to my new house -- see pictures below. I am now sharing a house with two of my Haas classmates. It is huge -- we have crazy amounts of space (the living room was built to host piano recitals, no joke) -- which is a nice change from my past room that was getting a bit too small considering my ever growing collection of books, binders and paper stacks. I do miss my old housemates - no more coffee drinking with Jane in the mornings, listening to Alberto's stories of his imminent americanization (growing muscles, meeting chicks...) and following the drama of Mike's romantic adventures, alas. The new house is situated between Elmwood and Rockridge in Berkeley, a cool area that i have loved exploring so far.

Travel: Denmark -> Berkeley -> Orange County -> Berkeley -> Lake Tahoe -> Berkeley.

Christmas in Denmark with the family, always a treat and it was so fun being there without worrying about what was happening at work at the same time. Global warming kicked in in full, we played a round of golf on the day of christmas eve...

New Years in the OC with my sister, as always involving the El Toro meat market and crazy barbecueing adventures...

Snowboarding in Lake Tahoe - this was the first trip to "our" lake Tahoe house. 23 Haas friends and I have rented a house up there for the season, bought season passes for Kirkwood and set up the wireless at the house, so there is pratically no reason not to be there every weekend (apart of course from other social events...)

Ok, this is *not the view from my new house, but a tourist shot from a break outing to the Golden Gate bridge. That's the bridge in the background and behind it San Francisco, Alcatraz and way in the distance Berkeley and Oakland.

The new house!

The piano-recital-size living room with my fabulous craigslist-find retro couch...

My room -- looks a lot like my place in Seattle i guess - nice and white...

I share a sun room office space with my roommate Mariette - so nice to have an office!

And of course a walk in closet, finally room enough for all my shoes.

We've got the Axe -- Berkeley wins "Big Game"!

2006-12-03T22:06:00.000-08:00

I went to my first Cal (Berkeley) Football game yesterday which was nothing less than the 109th installment of the yearly"Big Game" against Stanford. I was a beautiful day at memorial stadium (which happens to be right next to the Haas business school on campus) and most importantly we won! It was a fun day out and a good way to not think about final- tests and -papers for a while... After the game we decided to act like undergrads and storm the field, which resulted in the lovely shot above of my Japanese buddy Jun and I with one of the Cal players - Go Bears!

Title Mania: VP of International

2006-12-03T21:58:00.000-08:00

All, it is with great joy that i share with you the fact that I have accomplished one of my goals in life: becoming "VP of International" -- International Student Affairs that is :-)

Over the past week we have had elections for the MBA Student Association and I challenged myself to run, which included writing a formal platform and (gulp!) presenting it infront of 500 people (ok - in reality probably only 200 showed up, but trust me, that was plenty!) -- I can't tell you how much I learned to appreciate the public speaking class we took at the beginning of this semester!

Anyway, I ended up coming out ahead of no less than 6 other candidates and feel quite honored that apparently a majority of the Haas student body trusts me with a decent budget and the welfare of the international student population.

Shut Up and Sing

2006-11-22T10:42:00.000-08:00

Went to the dixie chicks concert last friday and it was fantastic!

Free Speech Cafe - Amen

2006-11-05T14:53:00.000-08:00

I keep discovering new and exciting things around campus, berkeley and the general bay area. Today I came across this little nugget of architectural and ambience joy on the UC Berkeley Campus, the UC Berkeley Free Speech Cafe. I have about a million pages of homework to get through today (chicago trip taking its toll...) and the joy of being able to study on a teak benched outdoor patio, partially shaded by pine trees from the california indian summer sun is almost overwhelming - long live berkeley - amen.

Viva Chicago & Welcome Fall B Semester

2006-10-31T18:05:00.000-08:00

Just got back from the yearly Netimpact Conference at the Kellogg Scool of Management in Chicago - where we had a whale of time, both during the conference itself and on Saturday night where a Chicago native classmate took us out for some Halloween fun (hence the lovely get up seen in photo above!).

Netimpact is an organization of b-school students interested in making a positive social impact - in short people who want to make money while doing good at the same time.This is something I am pretty interested in at the moment and luckily something that is taken quite seriously here in Berkeley. For those who are all about the details: "double/triple bottom line ventures" is what really interests me personally - that is you only consider your company successful if it delivers: monetary value, social value and environmental value (hence the 3 bottom lines). Expect environmentally friendly iPods (or the like) made by well fed people in developing nations to be built by Maiken-Inc. in the very near future...

Other than that - we finally finished our Fall A semester! Done are Statistics, Micro Economics, Organizational Behavior & Leadership Communication. I won't go in to the details of how busy we were and how much our final weeks sucked - the very brief version is that it was a bitch - but hey it is done and I feel confident that i passed all my classes!

So, next up and already in full swing are: Accounting (homework for which I should be doing right now :), Corporate Finance (I'm finally learning what the bean counters do all day!), Marketing (fun stuff like selling 3 wheel scooters in India) and Leadership (how-not-to-be a micro manager among other things...)

In other good news, I have been admitted to Haas' International-Business-Development Program meaning that I'll get to go on a 3-4 week consulting gig 'someplace-in-the-world' next spring - check the website above for past projects and countries, they include places like Zambia, Madagascar & Tahiti (but also Finland & Germany) - I wont know until January where I get to go to, but still quite exciting.

On this note, back to accounting and hopefully more updates soon!

Berkeley!

2006-08-29T22:54:00.000-07:00

Photos from home, school & life in Berkeley:

The Rose St Chateau: My room is the one window you can see on the (US) second floor to the right. Lots of green everywhere.

Enter the castle...

Dining room, access to deck, kicthen, living room from here.

Kitchen - this is where life, good food and great conversations happen.

My current room, I'll be moving downstairs in a few weeks when roomie Alberto returns from Mallorca, and other temp roomie Odile goes back home to France - you get the idea: there are lots of interesting people (coming & going) in this place. Also notice my new cat Shadow, he sort of comes with the room.

My favorite afternoon study spot - the deck.

Jane, my 'landlady', on the deck.

The roof deck, overlooking the bay.

Ok, time to go to school, this is from our first day of Orientation Week, when we had our class of 2008 photo taken - hooray.

Entering the Haas buildings from the east.

More Haas.

The UC Berkeley campus campanile.

View of the Haas School from said Campanile (in front of the stadium).

View of the SF Bay from said Campanile.

Campus sunset view of the Golden Gate bridge.

Pictures from Denmark

2006-08-28T22:34:00.000-07:00

A few shots from my trip to Denmark this summer. I spent most of my time with my (extended) family while there: my mother had invited our '19 closest relatives' to share a week a vacation home on the Danish north sea coast with us, as her way of celebrating her 60th birthday. We were blessed with wonderful weather and lots of fun family times.

Enjoying a Danish Hot Dog during a brief Copenhagen stint - Note the Danes claim to have invented the Hot Dog, maybe that is why it has such a Danish name... hmmm...

The world famous canals of Nyhavn (Copenhagen) - My great grandfather had a restaurant (or bar, that is still debated among family members -- I am leaning towards the bar version...) just a few yards from here. If only he had kept it... (this place is now one of the most expensive places in CPH to own/run a business).

Danes love icecream - this is one of the favorites: three scoops of ice cream, smothered in whipped topping, jam and a cream puff thingy.

Copenhagen harbor navigation aid.

Danish Queen Margrethe's Yacht "Dannebrog" - this shot is from SÃ¸nderborg (close to where my parents live) which the Queen traveled to as part of her summer vacation. I did she her, however she was ant-sized in my pictures, due to the distance.

We've hit the beach in northwestern Jutland (Danish Northsea) - this is what a tiny, traditional Danish beach resort looks like.

Ahhh, beach.

Heading out for a sunset walk.

Shopping time - "Palmer" are my favorite Danish candies, and they are not easy to come buy. I found just one store selling them in the 3 weeks i was there, hence the photo documentation.

Mom chilling at the cabin.

The MÃ¸ller-Hansen Family dressed up and ready for my mother's formal celebration dinner, which was a fish and seafood buffet, needless to say, it was delicious.

A tad bit of 'culture': on the way out of the country we made a brief stop a the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde - this is (was) a real Vikingship, made around year 750-800.

More facts about the good old vikings.

Finally, this is Kronborg, the castle in Helsingør/Elsinore where (according to Shakespeare) Hamlet lived (the real princess Hamlet or Hamled, if he did in fact exist, most likely lived in Jutland, roughly 1000 years before this castle was build...)

Danmark Dejligst

2006-07-18T06:50:00.000-07:00

My cousin Sofie and I and another very famous young lady in Copenhagen on July 16th 2006.

To the Nicest Guys in East Asia... Thank You!

2006-07-04T15:42:00.000-07:00

I realize that i have forgotten something very important so far: posting a shout out to the two "Nicest Guys in East Asia"*: Masaki from my house in Chiba and Makoto, an AMZN friend.

Masaki, thank you so much for making sure that not only I but also my, much too big & heavy, luggage made it back from Japan...

Makoto, thank you so much for making sure that I never felt entirely lost in translation, for giving me the chance to eat Fugu and for showing me the Shinto prayer ropes (I am now perfectly equipped for my future endeavors.)

You're both great people and friends, who helped make my time in Japan very special, thank you!!

*thank you Masaki, for kindly providing your own 'title'... :)

Hola California!

2006-07-04T14:44:00.000-07:00

Posting a brief update to let you all know that I have arrived safe & sound in my temporary Orange County home. The weather here is gorgeous, 80 degrees and sunny, which has been adding quite a bit of joy to my otherwise chore filled week: I have been trying to get everything sorted for school start/my move to Berkeley and I am quite please with the progress, as you can see I am a real California resident now with both a CA license and new plates for the Super Focus (which of course from know on will be known as the Super Cali Focus...).

I already miss Japan terribly and I am having the strangest jet-lag/withdrawal symptoms such as craving Granola at exactly 3.30 in the afternoon (which is 7.30 AM in Japan, my standard breakfast time there...) and almost crying in the deli section of the local Vons at the sight of their take-out Sushi (unfortunately un-related to Japanese Sushi...) On a side note, I am sure that Mini Stop combini store chain management has called a special emergency conference to discuss why sales in the northern part of Chiba-ken are suddenly falling drastically.

Another fun little activity of mine here in the OC has been dogsitting my sister's dog Jackie (that's her right here). She's a fun and slightly crazy little dog. I have been keeping up on my running schedule and for anyone looking to spice up their work outs I can highly recommend adding a 2 year old Jack Russell and a wild life running trail...

Finally, I have of course been doing due diligence when it comes to following the Soccer Worldcup and I have on several occasions gotten quite the kick out of knowing that while I am watching the games here, my friends in Japan, Denmark, Germany, UK, Ireland, Seattle, Brazil are watching as well. For the Germany-Argentina quarter finals, I joined my sisters housemate Chris as he headed to Huntington Beach's German Village "Old World" for an 8AM soccer party that included plenty of beer, sausages and happy Germans. Alas, after today I guess we will no longer be going back there for the final, which means that I'll also be missing out on the Dachshund Race oh well... :)

Next up is brief trip to Berkeley to look for housing -- no idea how that is going to work out yet, but, I am out-of-control excited about being going to check out the place that will be my home for the next two years, so stay tuned, more news to come!

Counting Down & Moving On (almost!)

2006-06-22T05:37:00.000-07:00

It is official, the count down has started, for real: I'll be leaving Japan in less than 60 hours and it is time to start packing and stop blogging... Mentally I am trying to get myself into gear for the dmv appointments, tax returns, insurance phone calls, apartment searches and other 'fun activities' that starting next week will take the place of my daily Japanese classes. What an amazingly strange thought at this point!

My plans for the next few weeks are: Sunday June 25th leaving Japan and heading to my temporary home at my sister's house in Orange County, CA (-- while there I'll hopefully get everything taken off of in prep for school starting in August), on July 11th heading to Denmark for some quality time with the extended family (-- this will be the first time since *1997* that I spent over 3 weeks in my country - unbelievable!), August 4th back to the US and August 7th, ta-da!, school starts in Berkeley with "Math & Communications Camp". So yes, there is much more fun to come. I am not sure at this point how much I'll be able to maintain the blog during this time, but I do hope to be able to post an update now and then, so don't forget to check in, ok?!

What will I miss about Japan?

The language classes - adding new little pieces to the puzzle everyday continues to be great fun and it makes me feel "grrr" to have to put the pause on for a while. Luckily my friends at Japanese Pod101 are bound to keep me entertained until I can take back up my studies (hopefully later this year).

The fun people I've met & the "Matsudo J&F Soccer lounge".

THE FOOD, THE FOOD, THE FOOD ($1 kaiten sushi never being out of reach for example)

*Big* city life, little dramas and great discoveries awaiting around every corner

24h 'Kombinis' on every other corner

Trains that go everywhere at any time, 20 times an hour.

Talking toilets (ok, just kidding).

The Love & Hate List (i.e. these things can be annoying, but I know I'll miss the anyway)

Jingles everywhere - the vegetable song in the produce section of my supermarket, the fun little tune announcing the arrival of a train, the fake bird noises indicating (to the blind) the location of the stairwell.

The cheerful army of "Irashaimase!" sayers greeting my upon entrance to any given store, not once, not twice, but up to at least 50 times (and probably longer, but I've always had to leave the store at this point).

Girls in Maid-Costumes, walking with their knees bend inwards, because they think it is cute

What I look forward to giving up...

Overcrowded trains, random people sleeping and snoring happily on my shoulder.

"Mushiatsui" = Hot & humid weather

Japanese style toilets

What I am looking forward to back home...

A few select, good foods: Red wine (ok, technically not food I guess...), Blue Cheese, Chocolate, a nice little steak from El Toro Meats & Danish hot dogs, of course!

Hanging out with the family, first in the OC & since in Denmark

Being re-united with my 2 boxes of shoes (although this will take another little while I fear)

With this, I'll leave you for a little while - Ja Mata & see you later...

More last minute fun...

2006-06-22T05:25:00.000-07:00

Squeezed in 'just one more' little last minute activity today -- a photography exhibit at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography featuring a British photographer named Michael Kenna, presenting the black & white landscapes he has captured in Japan over the last 4 years or so. The show was *amazing* -- you can check out these images on display on his website. This one was my favorite shot: "Fierce Wind" quite dramatic...

サッカーワルドカップ - Soccer World Cup!

2006-06-21T07:22:00.000-07:00

Today's honorable random mention goes to... The FIFA Soccer World Cup. As you may have noticed the soccer world cup slogan is something like "uniting people as friends" - I don't know if that is actually working out in Germany, but in Matsudo, Chiba-ken, Japan it has been a huge success: in my dorm there are a lot of soccer fans, from all over the world. From the landlord, who gladly puts up multiple projectors when Japan is playing, to the folks from Burma who have taught me that soccer in fact used to be quite popular there until the military junta decided to redirect all funds towards guns, to the Indian guy cheering for Iran due to the ethnic ties between India and the Middle East... It's a riot. Every night the soccer fans congregate in front of our shared big screen TV to watch the days highlights and games, with people dropping out as the night drags on (the last game of the day is on at 4AM Japan time...) in the hallways the Konbanwas have been replaced by "Which game are you watching tonight?" and "have you heard that Team X beat Team Y?", alliances change quickly and sympathies are with which ever resident's team is playing tonight.
Japan, much too everyone's dismay, has struggled so far, loosing to AU and playing a 0-0 tie with Croatia. Friday 4AM will be the deciding match for everyone's darling: Japan will be meeting Brazil in Dortmund and half of J&F House will be getting up very early to cheer them on. The odds are not looking too favorable, but even the Brazilian residents have agree that Japan should- and deserves to win this one: it will be much more fun for all of us if they stay in the game...

Nihon Minka-en

2006-06-21T06:46:00.000-07:00

... And in the spirit of checking off "things-to-do" on my list, I also finally made it out to the Nihon Minka-en -- an "Open-Air Folk House Museum, [it] is an attempt to recreate 24 historical buildings from 15 different prefectures, dating from the late 17th to the early 20th century." I've been meaning to go for quite a while, but the recent start of rainy season has complicated matters a bit - whenever I've had time to go, it has been raining. Last Sunday was no different but I decided to bite the bullet since i really wanted to see this place and I was not disappointed (albeit somewhat wet).
It's quite impressive to see the detail of the craftmanship that went into these places, the regional differences in the building designs (steep roofs in regions with lots of snow for example) and it also helped me understand certain Japanese customs, such as the "always taking your shoes off when entering a home" for example: as you may be able to see in the second image, a lot of the houses were laid out in such a way that the first space/area you reach when entering was used for everything from horses, to storage and general dirty-work - whereas the living quarters were on a slightly elevated area off to one side -- with this layout in mind, it makes complete sense that one would shed the outdoor + dirty area shoes before stepping up onto the living area space, right?! At least this is now my personal theory, which may of course be completely off :)
While at the Minka-en, I also enjoyed a serving of Sansai Soba -- Soba noodles with "Mountain Vegetables". I think I described the mountain vegetables, aka young fern, before, but I've tried adding a picture as it really is quite a pretty, albeit unusual veggie.

Tea Ceremony - Dozou!

2006-06-21T06:39:00.000-07:00

Finally made it to a traditional tea ceremony last week - the WLE crew took us to the Imperial Palace Hotel and it was a fun afternoon...

Tokyo Bizarro

2006-06-16T19:40:00.000-07:00

As I may have mentioned before one of my favorite things about Tokyo are the many strange and totally un-expected sights and events one seem's to come across here. The last in this series was last week's dinner at Zakuro a Turkish/Persian restaurant close to Niporri Station. I have chosen the Nippori area for my weekly get together with Yoriko, because i wanted to check out the temples and old shopping streets located in the area. We did that and then set out for a place to get some dinner, stumbling on Zakuro which had been mentioned with one-line in my Time-Out guide book as excentric. It was so indeed, not so much because you sit on the floor, while feasting on an enourmous amounts of (delicious) middle eastern food, while watching/listing to Turkish pop music video clips and finally being entertained by a (thai looking) belly dancer, but mostly due to the manager who runs the place as an interactive Persian comedy, dressing people up in local garb, match-making across table and force feeding persian cotton candy to the guests - very very amusing.

Girl's Day(s) Out

2006-06-09T06:32:00.000-07:00

Wrapping up yet another mad Tokyo week, while waiting for the Soccer World Cup opening game to kick off at 1AM Tokyo time (-- it's great to be in Japan during soccer world cup, as they are as excited about it as any EU country 'back home' could be.) With only little over 2 more weeks left in Japan i have once and for all given up on the idea of even experiencing some quiet time while here, Tokyo just doesn't lend itself to relaxation very well and I am equally determined to enjoy every minute of this wonderfully mad place and -pace, even if it means to occasional train coma. Fortunately being completely passed out on the train is the standard here, snoring and drooling even doesn't seem to phase anyone...

My German friend Christine took left again this morning after about 10 days packed with new fun adventures, taking me through another few items on my 'things I must still do' list (which however keeps growing continuously :). We kicked off her visit with a half day trip that took us from Asakusa (old Tokyo the way you'll see it portrayed in movies and guide books), via a Sumida River boat cruise to Odaiba, the futuristic home of building's like the famous Fuji Terebi Biru as well as Tokyo's artificial beach (and the Tokyo Big Sight where the Design Festa from a few weeks back to place).

Last Saturday was Christine's Birthday, so in the spirit of general girlyness we spent the bulk of that day cruising through the lovely little streets and shops of Daikanyama, which continues to be my favorite part of Tokyo. On a side note, the funny thing is that Daikanyama is surprisingly underrepresented in all guide books and I have even met several Tokyo-ites who have never been there, despite the fact that it is just so wonderfully quaint. Quoting the above linked website: "Tourists flock to the big-name glitz of the Ginza strip and the teenage circus of Harajuku. Locals head to the quieter streets of Daikanyama. A low-rise neighborhood chock-full of quirky boutiques and sidewalk cafes, Daikanyama often encloses leafy hidden courtyards within its clusters of shops and homes." perfect, just perfect.
Our plan was to finish off the birthday celebration with a visit to the New York Bar in the Park Hyatt, which is the one Scarlett Johanson & Bill Murray hang out in in Lost in Translation (I have been 'saving' this one for a special event, given the $30 cover they charge just to enter, being a central feature in an Oscar winning movie does pay off I guess...) However we never made it that far, due to a great restaurant recommendation Christine had received from Misao, Amazon.co.jp's PR manager: Cube Zen features seating, literally in concrete cubes as longs as very nice Japanese fusion cooking & I'd highly recommend to anyone looking for a cool place to have dinner in Tokyo.

Next up was a Sunday day trip out to Hakone a little mountain resort about 90 minutes outside of Tokyo famous for it's proximity to Mt.Fuji and it's hot springs. We did the "Hakone Free Pass" loop, which basically means that you buy an 'all-you-can-eat', bus, train, gondola, boat pass that takes you through everything worth seeing while there. We were lucky that the initially overcast weather cleared up enough for us to be able to enjoy the great Fuji views and overall this really was a beautiful trip/loop - my only regret being that we weren't able to stay over night and enjoy the hot springs and maybe even do a bit of hiking, something I've been missing a bit as of late.

Christine went to Kyoto on Monday & Tuesday, so our next joint adventure was a Wednesday 7AM trip to Tsukiji, yep, that's the fish market. While getting up at 5 in order to make it there was a bit of a drag, I have to say that this was definitely a sightseeing highlight for me. The market is huge and very very busy. It's an active market and not a tourist attraction and we almost got ourselves run over many times, by cars and little transportation devices buzzing about at a completely maddening speed in what to me seemed like total chaos. But, we got to see an amazing amount of very interesting fish & see food and were even treated to sampling fresh tuna belly - cut right there and served to us as finger food to be dipped in a big jar of soy. Best sashimi I ever had.Another fun aspect of the market was the language spoken. Among the variations of Japanese are the versions spoken by men and women respectively - Tsukiji is definitely a man's world - it was very fun listening to. A few notes on the photos included here (I have another 20 in case you happen to be looking for funky fish images :) -- the first one shows a couple of the fish market dudes getting ready to cut up some nice big chunks of frozen tuna (the pinkish things seen on the wheelbarrow). And the next one, well, that would be breakfast!

More Conversation

2006-05-30T05:33:00.000-07:00

This week's number one learning goal is improving my conversation skills: I met yesterday with Yoriko-san for a conversation practice dinner & today in Ueno Park with part of the class crew for a follow up. Being a very mixed class has the benefit that for some of the students, such as the Koreans, it is now easier to try to converse in Japanese than in English and this means lots of opportunity to practice. It's quite amazing what you can manage to get across even with a limited vocabulary, for example I learned today that "in Korea most pigeons living in tourist spots are so fat (from too much/generous tourist feeding) that they can no longer fly and hence only stagger about". Who would have guessed a few months ago that I would be discussing this wonderful topic in Japanese soon?

Yoriko-san continues her quest to teach me the "tomodachi-fomu" (i.e. colloquial Japanese) and I am slowly beginning to get it, at least in theory. This is a great pleasure as it significantly adds to my coolness factor in class during breaks ;)

In other news my German friend Christine has come to Tokyo to visit, giving me a reason to get those tourist-must-sees checked of my list, so expect more photos soon...

Disaster Prevention

2006-05-27T09:48:00.000-07:00

Today's weekend excursion took us to Tokyo's "Disaster Prevention Center", an interactive experience with great simulations such as the magnitude 7 earthquake simulator that we are enjoying in this picture (and which in no time convinced me, that i do not need to experience a magnitude 7 earthquake, ever - but at least I was not wearing shorts like some of the guys who came out with badly rug-burned knees...). Other fun 'rides' included the typhoon simulator, a burning kitchen, a burning building maze & a 3-D movie of a Tokyo earthquake scenario, complete with burning buildings crashing down on us. Man, do I love Japanese exhibition design!

So, what else is going on?*

2006-05-26T05:04:00.000-07:00

[* title loosly inspired by the Australia Tourism Campaign: So, where the bloody hell are you? if you haven't seen this comercial/spot, you must check it out on the website above -- you'll want to go to AU asap.]

Apart from spending geeking out on my jp language addiction, here's a digest of other fun stuff happening over the last week:

EU Film Fest
Last Thursday I had the chance to go to one of the EU Film screenings that were taking place as part of the "Friendship Week" put on in Tokyo by the European Union. I went with two friends from school, Ben & Ina, from AU & Indonesia respectively, and it was quite a treat to see both their and the rest of the audiences reactions to the movie we had chosen: the Swedish Ketchup Effect. Should you want to know what it is like to be a teenager in Scandinavia this is the film to watch.

Hidetaka Lee Fashion Show
Friday last week Yu-Ching (former AMZN.co.jp) had invited me to her new company's first fashion show, held at a club/bar in Aoyama. I took two of the girls from my class with me (Opal & Vera, who both study design) and we were not disappointed. This was my first real pro fashion ever, and I loved seeing the fancy make + hairdos up-close, of course along with the beautiful Hidetaka Lee clothes. As a special bonus, i actually won a Hidetaka Lee shirt in a prize drawing - so i am now the very proud owner of a Japanese couture item - how cool is that?

Design Festa
Saturday it was time for a visit to the Tokyo Design Festa - this is a biannual event where young and upcoming artists can apply for permits to put their work on display. The Festa takes place in a tiny part of the Tokyo Big Sight Convention Center, and still it is *huge*, in other words the TBS itself turned out to bit quite impressive - I don't think I've ever been to a convention center the size of the LAX airport.... We spent about 7 hours at the venue and made it through a good 2/3s of the exhibit. It was a fun mix of all kinds of more or less obscure types of art and design work: everything from Manga, to Pseudo-Porn (-- such as the "School Girl Karma Sutra Illustration Series" displayed by one artist, this is JP after all, anything goes...) to cutesy stuffed animals in every shape and color, to hip hop music, jewelry, clothing, bags, engrish language t-shirts, art work, body painting, you name it...

Yoriko-San
Monday of this week, it was time for my first get-together with Yoriko-san, who has kindly volunteered to be my new Japanese Conversation partner. Conversation Partners are Japanese 'buddies' assigned to the language school students to provide language exchange outside of the class environment. Yoriko-san is a 30 old Tokyo woman, working in Chemicals B2B and speaking English with a lovely Oxford, but who most importantly patiently listens to my nascent Japanese. She has also promised to help me learn 'informal' Japanese, which i am very excited about. This almost merits a post on it's own, but essentially the Japanese taught in Schools is always the formal way of speaking, which to some extend is good, as it means you won't end up being too much of a rude foreigner, however it also means that you are constantly addressing you buddies in a "how do you do today, sir?" kind of way, until you start learning the informal verb conjugations.

Hidden Gems
Tuesday was spent in search of hidden gems, but to make a long story short: upon wanting to visit an Indian Style temple I ended up having sushi at the Tsukiji Fishmarket (the sushi btw. was ridicously good, by far the best i have ever had) and stumbling upon the House of Shiseido corporate museum, a very cool little exibition space, with some very groovy interactive display cases (look for the 2nd floor "archive table" on their website to see pictures). After Sapporo's cool Yebisu Beer Museum and this one, I am seriously considering only visiting free corporate museums in JP from now on... What was quite funny about the Shiseido Museum as well, was that their current Art Deco show features mainly photographs of and from the Metropolitan Hotel in Shanghai, which in turn happens to be right down the street from where i stayed while i was there. I passed it everyday when heading for the subway and little did I know that it is considered a monument of Art Deco architecture...

ダウインチ　コード
The week's final event, worthy of honorable mention: The Da Vinci Code, watched on Wednesday, which is Ladies Day at the movie theaters in Tokyo, meaning half price. Nice introduction to extremely fast moving Japanese subtitles (luckily they do not dub movies), but hey, I managed to catch a "Nani" and an "Arigato" here and there :)

日本語がだいすきです。I love Japanese!

2006-05-26T04:42:00.000-07:00

A bit more on this topic... I'm not really sure why learning Japanese is such a whale of a time, but it reminds me a bit of when I was in second grade and went through 3 years worth of Danish-books within 6 months [-- which had the unfortunate side effect of driving my teacher crazy, something for which she blames me to this day & which has led to unpleasant screaming scenarios in downtown Augustenborg, DK when visit my family, no joke, but way too much information I realize :)].

I think i get my language kick from the feeling of entering a new world, it is as if i am slowly opening a door to a wonderful world and given my impatient tendencies, the desire to fling the door open instead makes me greedily want to absorb as much information as in any way possible on any given day... Successfully buying stamps at the post office [-- while explaining that i want to send these 5 cards now and get 5 extra stamps for later - "so you mean 10 stamps total?"] or ordering my morning coffee at Starbucks and finally being able to explain that i want it in the take out cup [in 'real' japanese, rather than resorting to the 'take-out-o kudasai' cheating route] are great little moments of new found language joy.

So, there it is, i'm a language Geek (-- language Otaku?! :) and loving it :)

ちょっと　いそがしですよ。-- A bit busy...

2006-05-26T04:20:00.000-07:00

I am afraid the blog is suffering a bit again. With just a bit over 4 weeks left in Japan i find my self struggling to do everything i want to do and currently the blog is the number one victim of this fight. Probably rightfully so, but still I'd love to add more updates as there is simply so much to tell you about, but at the same time there are only so many hours in the day...

What's keeping me busy is a blend of intense language studies and an everlasting list of things i want to do and experience in Tokyo/Japan [-- combined with a bit of leg work needing to happen before I start university in the August (which is, (wow!) just a few months away now!]. Mostly this is a very good kind of business as I have to confess that my love for Japan and Japanese continues to grow by the day, but at the same time this exact fondness makes me sad to think that I'll be leaving 'so soon' and that i won't get to the bottom of this wonderful (subarashi!) language this time around, which in turn just makes me want to do more and see more -- you get the picture.

Anyway i have been contemplating new an improved blogging strategies and think i will shift to more frequent, but shorter updates, why do I talk so much anyway?! :)

Stay tuned!

Kanda Matsuri

2006-05-17T02:27:00.000-07:00

This past weekend offered a couple of interesting activities. First on Saturday there was the annual "Thai Festival", a show case of Thai culture & food, which i visited with Opal from my class who is from Thailand and hence was able to provide excellent guidance when it came to picking from the many delicious foods and snacks being offered. Unfortunately Saturday was also miserably cold and rainy which put a bit of a damper on the tropical festivities (- note however that this may have been a good thing in the end - apparently last year's Thai Festival was "unbearably crowded", now it was just "crowded"). The weekend highlight however was supposed to be Sunday's "Kanda Matsuri" a festival/parade in honor of the Kanda Shrine, located not far from Akihabara (electric town').

I never found out exactly what the purpose of the parade was other than carrying around some of the sacred shrine objects (such as the one seen here, while passing Akihabara's 7 storey SEGA "Gemusentaa" - arcade) and making lots of noise. But it was interesting, crowded and as you can see for some reason the men did not wear pants... I'll be fair, they did wear loin-cloths, but there was still a quite surprising amount of manly flesh on display by Tokyo standards, in some cases a bit too much maybe ;)

イケア = I-KE-A

2006-05-17T01:36:00.000-07:00

Just got back from a little outing to the new IKEA store located in Minami Funabashi. It's the first IKEA to open in Japan (well, technically it is not actually the first: apparently IKEA tried to conquer Japan in the eighties and it didn't work out, so let's say the first in 20 years...) and it is is *huge* (for those of you familiar with the Seattle IKEA, think 3x that size) and due to some stroke of business brilliance it is located right across from Minima Funabashi station. Granted, M-F is not exactly central Tokyo, but still I can't imagine what it takes to get a chunk of land like that within 30min of Tokyo center - kudos to our Swedish friends.

As a confessing IKEA-holic, I can report that the MF store is the real deal right down to the meat balls and Billy shelves, with a few Japanese quirks added: note that the kitchen display in this picture has a rice cooker sitting on the kitchen counter for example. This is the good old Mc-Shrimp-Burger approach (a JP MCD specialty) I presume, and I am a bit curious as to what the Japanese customers think of it -- it is still hard for me to imagine Japanese apartments decked out in IKEA's Swedish country style line for example, even if they do feature an added rice cooker.

Another fun little observation was the number of mothers / families with young children in the store. I've wondered for a while where the Japanese children are on a normal day. This may sound odd, but I always see plenty of school kids on the trains, however rarely any young (1-5) children anywhere. I now know that they are hanging out at IKEA in M-F. Maybe IKEA has a reputation of being a hot "where-to-go-with-your-toddler" destination in Tokyo, or maybe today was just "family day" - very peculiar.

The hot dog stand, complete with a JP style vending machine where you buy a ticket for your desired refreshment. The ticket is then handed to the hot-dog-stand person, who'll give you your food/drink.

See my hot dog ticket below - reading (for those not skilled in Katakana, he he):
"Hottodoggu" - Japanese isn't that hard after all, eh?!

The Odd Shot

2006-05-14T07:33:00.000-07:00

My collection of odd Japan photos continues to grow steadily and since tonight is photo night I thought I'd share a few:

Why wouldn't every train station have a Hello Kitty instant Pop Corn machine?!

Riding Yamaha's new electric scooter on Earth Day in Maronouchi.

Carrie & I meet a true Shibuya girl in Nagano.

"The Midget II" -- possibly the world's smallest pick-up truck.

Yen 100 fortune sold at shrine in Kyoto.

Dinner!

The electric toilet seat 'remote'...

Tadaima (I'm home!)

2006-05-14T06:21:00.000-07:00

Golden week came and went in a blitz. My mom and sister made it to Japan safe and sound, and we managed to pull of our ambitious "Highlights of Japan in 6 days". In all honesty it was literally a blast, a whirlwind of sights and good times. To give you and idea of what we were up to I'll list a few things and add a couple of pictures below.

Tokyo

Shibuya (shopping with teenage Tokyo and Coffee in the "STABA" (Starbucks in Japanese) known from Lost in Translation (the one where you can watch the world's largest pedestrian crossing)
Omotesando (Ritzi stores like the green Prada diamond and the new Omotesando Hills complex -- as featured in the NY Times in March)
Harajuku ("Kiddy Land", a most fab 7 storey Japanese-cartoon-character store, Takeshita Dori (where the Harajuku girls get their Harajuku girl outfits...), Harajuku girls & the Meji Shrine)
Shinjuku (enjoying the, free, view from the Tokyo Municipal Government twin tower building)
Roppongi (the inevitable Cafe Daisy (danish food) treat)
Ginza (more ritz & glitz...)
Maronouchi & the Imperial Palace grounds (riding the Hello Kitty bus - yeah!)
Akihabara (electric town & yodabashi camera, home of the yodabashi camera jingle/song... ;)

Nikko

Day trip north of Tokyo, world heritage site with a large number of temples & shrines, many devoted to the first Tokugawa shogun Ieyasu. Also known from a Japanese saying that goes something like "If you haven't seen Nikko, then you can't say you've really lived..."

Kyoto

Need i say it: another home of many a Japanese world heritage site and famously spared from most destruction during WW2 for that reason. As my guidebook states: "to get just a gist of what there is to see in Kyoto one would need at least 2 weeks"... alas we had to make due with two days, during one of the most crowded seasons of the year and still Kyoto shone as a place of extraordinary beauty and the epitome of Japanese Temple viewing. I wont try to list all the places we went to, but i think we covered a good mix of diverse sights, from the Gold & Silver Pagodas, to a couple of Zen-gardens, Geishas & the inner city, the Arashiyama forest and finally the hillside set Kiyomizu temple...

Welcome to Japan! Aase & Julie getting in to the Japanese spirit by donning hotel Yukatas and taking daily self portraits...

Aase meets "Harajuku girl"

Danish treats.

Japanese Treats in honor of the upcoming Soccer World Cup to be held in Germany.

Back in the city: Akihabara (electric town) also sells 100Yen rain coats...

Nikko is a place of epic beauty that lends itself to serious contemplation...

...among other things....

Trying to blend in and be Japanese: family photo under a blossoming cherry tree in Nikko.

Welcome to Kyoto...

...where there is no shortage of temples...

...or VIP moss (click image to enlarge)...

...or local beauties...

...and their foreign counterparts...

Find Waldo! -- Blasting through the JP landscape on the Shinkansen (bullet train) from Kyoto back to Tokyo Fujisan is hiding in a deep layer of spring clouds.

Return of the Powerbook

2006-04-29T07:07:00.000-07:00

The Powerbook has arrived in Tokyo today and is alive and well -- at long last - amen.
Writing this to test the new wifi set-up in my 12x5 feet JP 'home'.
Oh, and my Mom & Sister made it here safely too... :)

Happy Golden Week - Your Treat is... Pictures!

2006-04-28T03:53:00.000-07:00

My (new) friend Carrie, who went back to DC this week, made my day today by sending me these two lovely shots from our Tokyo adventures. Hope you find them as entertaining as I do :)

-- from the Sumo tournament at Yasukuni Jinja on 4/7. I forgot the name of this wrestler, however judging by the hairstyle he is one of the better ones, lower ranks don't wear their hair like this. (This info courtesy of my next-seat computer room neighbour Masaki.)

-- from Disney Sea, no further comment :)

Golden Week, Golden Week!

2006-04-26T05:51:00.000-07:00

For once an adventure preview : next week will be Golden Week in Japan. The one week a year that contains 3 public holidays and therefore means mayor vacation time. For me, and mostly likely the blog, as well. In my case I'll be doing the true Japanese thing: spending time with my family. My Mother & Sister are flying in to Tokyo on Saturday and we will then be off (also entirely in line with Japanese customs) on a whirlwind tour of 6 days of best of Tokyo, Nikko & Kyoto. I hope to be able to post and update before that, but if not, the blog will be back on the block (old danish joke - sorry) around May 10th. Ja Matta!

A Tale of Two Museums

2006-04-26T04:53:00.000-07:00

Due to a peculiar twist of fate, yesterday took me on a fun tour of Tokyo contrasts. I was meeting Yu-Ching, a former AMZN Co-worker, for dinner in Roppongi hills but decided to join some of my classmates for a visit to the Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Photography before that. Unfortunately when we arrived at its Ebisu location it was closed due to changing of exhibits. Not wanting to have made the trip there in vain we took at quick look around and realized that we were close to the Yebisu Beer Museum, which is sponsored by/part of the Sapporo Breweries and hence charges no admission making it a perfect impromptu touring substitute. The Beer Museum Tour is kept short and sweet in favor of a swift tasting room arrival. Having been to the Carlsberg Breweries in Copenhagen about 25 times as a child (they make tasty sodas as well in case you were wondering why...), this tour really isn't all that impressive, but it does contain a few gems that justify a visit: A collection of Sapporo Beer advertisement posters through the years (from 1950-Now) featuring wonderful images from the the early Japanese Audrey Hepburns of the sixties to the permed & bikini clad Japanese beach beauties of the nineties. A high tech 3-D digitally animated fairy tale featuring a beer fairy (looking quite a bit like a cross over of Disney's Cinderella & Tinkerbell characters), and an evil guy turning beer in to water (gulp!). I didn't get much of the story to be honest, but the whole set up was very cool. Lastly there is the tasting room of course, which I with Dorothy in mind had to pay a diligent visit to and finally the gift shop with featured highlights such as a Beer Jello Desert (surprisingly tasty) and Beer Chocolate (not so much). All in all a whale of a time.

From there Roppongi Hills with its Mori Art Center was next on the list. The Mori had made my short list due to its highly acclaimed current exhibit Tokyo-Berlin/Berlin-Tokyo and features the added bonus of being located on the 52nd floor, and hence providing a breathtaking view of the city (yesterday was a bright, sunny and clear day :)
I loved the Tokyo-Berlin show - which hit very close to home having lived in Berlin for almost 5 years and being very familiar with the art scene there. -- The exhibit showcases the development in art & design in these two capitals over the last 150 years and draws up contrasts and parallels. I love this kind of stuff, end of story.

Dinner with Yu-Ching was great. It was my first visit to a Chinese restaurant (sorry, forgot the name) in Tokyo and it did not disappoint -- featuring superb dim sum and tofu-skin-rolls (I'm sure there is a better sounding English name for those). We followed it up with a stop at a Toraya a cafe/confectionery shop specializing in contemporary interpretations of traditional Japanese sweets, where I was treated to a delicate slice of cocoa-red-bean gateau, dusted with macha powder and served with ginger-cream - pure Japanese heaven.

Thank You

2006-04-22T21:15:00.000-07:00

Just a brief final word before I log out for today: Thank you for your great blog comments and feedback! It's really fun for me to hear from so many of you that you are reading and enjoying the blog :)

Ghibli Museum

2006-04-22T21:01:00.000-07:00

This past Wednesday I was in for another unique (although sort of world famous) treat - a visit to the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka (a Tokyo suburb). Ghibli is the movie studio, that has produced Miyazaki's animation films such as Spirited Away, Howls Moving Castle and until last week unbeknowst to me also my childhood's beloved "Heidi" cartoon from which I probably learned most of my first German. The Museum is a full on adventure experience, hosted in a specially constructed building with Ghibli-ish architecture both in- and outside. It is also extremely popular, which means that you actually have to buy tickets and reserve a visit time slot in advance!

I personally enjoyed the museum a lot, while not very big, it does house some really amazing artifacts from the movie productions and what I really liked, these are wrapped in mood board like rooms (decorated with all sorts of 'junk' ranging from fake fireplaces to british jam-glasses), so that you get the idea of actually truely entering the world of Howl's Moving Castle and you can imagine how they used all of these props to create/visualize the atmosphere they wanted the illustrators and animation artistst to bring to paper... Unfortunately the Museum is strictly "no photos", so if you're curios you might just have to come to Tokyo to see for yourself!

The Magic Kingdom, An Onsen & a Marathon

2006-04-22T20:20:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I embarked on a 3 day adventure featuring an odd, but in some ways typically Japanese combination of agenda items. I started the Saturday by joining Carrie, Tag and several other Kudan Institute students on a day tript to Tokyo Disneyland. Tokyo Disneyland is actually a double feature: Disneyland & Disneysea, so we opted for the Disneysea experience in order to get to try something that is unique to Japan (-- I believe this is the only "Disneysea" out there).

It's hard to describe what makes Disneysea, Disney*sea*, all of the attractions are laid out around an artificial lake/waterway, but are not necessarily water-related. we gave up on trying to understand what ties them together in the "Sea" experience but settled for the fact, that most of them are extremely well done and contain great rides. As such we visited, "The American Waterfronｔ” (-- a mix of retro Boston and 'Cape Codde' -original spelling), the Lost River Delta (-- whit a great Indiana Jones ride), Arabian Coast (-- think Aladdin), The Mermaid Lagoon (-- Ariel galore for kids), and Mysterious Island (-- my personal favorite, with very cool "20.000 leagues under the sea" inspired rides). Overall it was a really fun day and for some reason the whole Disney experience just seems made for Japan - here it seems entirely normal and expected to have hundreds of teenagers sporting Mickey-ears surrounding you and wealth of cheerful attraction attendants in crazy costumes greeting and directing you. Disneysea also featured a couple of other unique attractions, such as the "Cheese & Chicken Danish" which i found very entertaining, given that a Danish in Denmark would never contain anything salty... (and yes, of course I have a picture of it ;)

From Disneysea, we went straight to Tokyo station (riding the Disney train, that has Mickey-shaped windows part of the way of course...) where we hopped on the Shinkansen (the Bullet train) headed for Nagano. Tag, who is an avid runner, had signed up to run in The Olympic Commemorative Marathon there [Nagano was the site of the 1998 winter Olympics, which I remember mostly for being the first to feature snowboarding] and Carrie, Reiko (a Japanese friend) and I tagged along to cheer him on + plus to take advantage of the　chance to stay at a traditional Ryokan/Onsen (Japanese Inn/Hot Spring Bath). The Shinkansen was fun, but I must admit not all that different from the German ICE trains, on which I spent plenty of time while i lived there. They are however extremely fast, so taking us to Nagano in a flash, which left time for a first visit to the Onsen after we have checked in. There is a quite elaborate ritual associated with bathing in an Onsen, which I think has been described in great detail by many a travel author already, so I'll stick to the fact that after having changed into a Yukata (japanese robe), going to the bath area and completing the required washing and scrubbing (only causing a few "Tanoshi Maiken" exclamations here and there - meaning "entertaining Maiken", or rather, "Maiken is doing the funniest and probably completely wrong thing again..." :) it felt great to sit outside under a starlit sky in extremely hot and supposedly very healthy water...

Sunday was race day and while Tag was running we 3 girls did the best we could to travel from "Cheer-Stop" to cheer-stop along the route, which was a bit of a challenge given that most roads were closed down due to the race. We had a few 'great' moments during this "process" which Carrie and I will probably never forget, such as for example the Taxi driver, who we could have sworn was taking us almost to Hokkaido, while going on and on and about every type of fruit tree growing in the Nagano valley, blooming seasons etc... We managed to see Tag once a long the way and did get some video footage of him both at that time (KM 20) and later at the finish line, so overall i guess i went fairly well and in any event it was a beautiful day to be spending outside - clear blue skies and snow clad mountains all around us (- which admittedly did make me sad that ski season is over - those slopes sure looked good to me from the distance).
The rest of Sunday was spent at the Onsen, enjoying the bath and an amazing Japanese dinner with a good 10-15 different little delicacies, include some I hadn't tried before, such as the hot-fish-and-vegetable-jello (interesting albeit not a favorite quite yet :), an egg custard with vegetables, chicken and shrimp & sakura mochi among many others...

We stayed in Nagano another night and used Monday for general Nagano sightseeing and to visit the Zenkoji temple, which is known for having one of the oldest Buddha statues in Japan (so valuable that only a copy is on the display and that only once every 7 years!) and also for being of the first to allow female priests.

Co.Jp & Special Treats

2006-04-14T06:39:00.000-07:00

I went to visit my old friends at the Amazon.co.jp headquarters in Shibuya yesterday. It was a very unique and special experience to finally get to meet some of the people i have worked with for so long in their 'natural habitat', and it felt a lot like coming home in some way, due to the fact that Amazon really is Amazon all over the world -- same type of office set up etc. and due to the fact that I was welcomed so warmly by everyone there.

After the grand Amazon tour Makoto, Takashi & Ted took me out to dinner at a tiny Japanese restaurant close by that specializes in Japanese delicacies of all sorts. I don't know that i can re-create the complete list of foods we tried and or their names (neither in English nor in Japanese) but it was amazing and certainly the culinary highlight of my Tokyo stay so far. Let's see, here is what i recall:

"Sky-beans" - large green beans cooked in salty water -- not western style beans, but about 2/3 of an inch squarish beans that had to be picked out of the shell to be eaten.

"Mountain-vegetable" -- i've determined later that this must have been a type of Fern salad.

Pickled vegetable salad

Kazuo (a fish) sashimi with ginger & soy

Horse sashimi with ginger, garlic & soy

"A type of Eel" sashimi

"Some dried, salted fish" grilled

Cold udon noodles with Soy(?) sauce (-- practiced Japanese style noodle slurping and failed miserably)

Blowfish (fugu) -- and yes I am am obviously still alive :) [-- I did have Takeshi take the first bite... just to be on the safe side]

Green-tea salmon soup (-- practiced Japanese style soup eating and failed miserably)

Ume boshi - pickled, salty plum in rice & seaweed

Baked egg with 'special sauce'

and probably a few more things which i may have forgotten, due to the smooth and tasty Sake that came with the meal...

All in all, truly a very special and emotional evening.

カラオケ　-- Ka ra o ke

2006-04-14T06:13:00.000-07:00

A brief entry on my new 'hobby': until only few weeks ago i considered Karaoke nerdy & lame, now i am a confessing fan. I read somewhere once that if you feel tired, sad or depressed singing is a great cure, because it is not physically possible to engage in singing and remain depressed -- so true, so true... There are a few good Karaoke places close to where i live -- they are the Japanese kind, as seen in Lost in Translation, where you get you own 'box' and pay by the half hour which includes all-you-drink obscure cocktails like ocha-tea with whiskey or passion-grapefruit-something-alcohol. And it is fun, making a fool of your self in front of your friends, who take turns doing the same thing :)

Challenges -- Vodafone: "Everything is Love"

2006-04-14T01:57:00.000-07:00

I in my last update I forgot to mention some of the things that have been more interesting or challenging so far. Apart from my shopping for groceries taking two hours (-- how do you know which hair product does what when yo can't read the labels?!) -- my favorite example was my cell phone buying adventure:

I had decided to get a pre-paid cell phone in order to stay in touch with friends here and in order to be able to receive calls from home. Vodafone provides/sells pre-paid phones to customers in Japan regardless of immigration status. So far so go.

The first 3 Vodaphone stores i went to (there's quite a few of them), gave me differing explanations of why they would not sell me a phone. Then I went to the one where my German friends Vera had purchased hers. They seemed happy to sell me one, however there was a problem: while anyone can buy a phone, in theory, in practice your passport/national ID has to meet the Japanese standard, in the sense that your home country address has to be printed in it. That's not the case for most other countries, so, hours of flipping through passport pages followed, suggestions of writing the address into my passport on the page designated for accompanying children (-- I decided not to do that, in favor of keeping my passport valid for general traveling purposes...), calls to the internal "how-to" hotline & waiting. After the first 2 hours in the store, we were asked to come back in two hours. OK, after that and another two hours we were asked to come back tomorrow... That day we first waited two hours in the store, then were sent home again. At this point i was starting to wonder whether this was the Japanese polite way of telling us "no", by asking us to "come back tomorrow" every day. So, I decided to give them my e-mail address, so that they could notify me when the contract was ready, in order for everyone to be able to save face and in order not to spend 30% of my Tokyo time in a Vodafone store, listening to jingles by the J-Pop band "Dreams come True" promoting the latest MP3 playing wonder-keitai (cell phone).

But, true to the JP Vodafone slogan "Everything is Love", a miracle occurred and on the 4 day I eventually actually did get my phone... talk about cultural differences -- I remember having similar problems when I first moved to Seattle, where however things were resolved the American way: "As long as you give us more money (aka a $500) deposit, of course you can have a phone". :)

So, i am now the proud owner of a super-un-cool (to get the cool japanese tv-mp3-everyhting phones, you need a normal month to month contract), bright yellow, "pre-paido keitai denwa" , but hey it works and it even takes pictures and sends and receives e-mail! Should anyone feel the need to test it, you can reach me at (please convert this into a regular e-mail address, I'm posting the anti-spam version): maiken[dash]jpcell[at]moeller-hansen[dot]dk or + 81 (0)90 983 94 983

Hasta Luego! (hmm - wrong language -- never mind...)

Tokyo To

2006-04-10T01:36:00.000-07:00

Time to try to update this post, hoping that blogger doesn't choke on it this time. There is a certain amount of Russian roulette involved in using public, shared computers & network I guess... (but hey, in only 3 weeks my sister will be bringing my beloved powerbook to Japan!).

So, let me tell you a bit about what I have been up to, the short answer is "a lot"! The last 10 days have been spent settling in to Tokyo life and doing a decent amount of sightseeing, here are some of the highlights:

School: I have classes every week day from 9 AM to 1 PM. The school is about 50 minutes away (using the train system) however we usually leave around 7.30 in order to catch one of the earlier trains that are not quite as crowded - minimizing the sardine-ni-fication factor... (danish joke, sorry folks...;) The 40 minutes I have to wait for classes to start are spent with Starbucks Coffee ("shorto latte hotto") & home work, both of which seem to significantly improve my Japanese... which by the way is still fairly minimal although It is a great pleasure to experience that i am starting to understand things. For example the waitress at a sushi place we went to tonight told us to "please be careful the tea is hot" and I understood all the words (--however it only takes 3 words to say this in Japanese...). I have also learned the entire Hiragana character set, which means that I am starting to enjoy reading the ads on the train etc. - not that i know what the words I am reading mean, but I can read them, at least some of them: up next are the Katakana characters and of course the endless list of Kanjis, which I doubt I'll ever make it through (I so far haven't met any foreigner who'd claim to know any significant amount of them)...

Other fun stuff: As i mentioned in my last post, I've made friends with Carrie & Tag who are here from DC. Given their previous knowledge of Tokyo & their Japanese skills, we've been able to get around quite a bit. School has also been a great source of 'cultural activities' -- here's a short list:

Visit to Kamakura which for a while was the JP capital, loong time ago (see link for details) and which now/still boasts around 70 different shrines as well as the quite impressive "Daibutsu" that is in one of these pictures. We were extremely lucky to get to visit during Hanemi (Cherry Blossom Viewing), it was a simply amazing day and a day trip I'd highly recommend to anyone visiting Tokyo.

Next up was a Sunday visit to Harajuku (where the crazy-li made up JP teenagers hang out on Sundays and inspiration for Gwen Stefani's Harajuku Girl song). We rounded this off with a visit to the Meiji Shrine, where we got to witness a Shinto wedding (Cherry Blossom season is also wedding season).

More cherry blossoms around the imperial palace, in Ueno park and in Shinjuku Park - the latter features the apparently famous cherry blossom trees that boom in two colors at once (pinl and white).

A visit to Yasukuni Shrine & museum, which is the Shrine that has gotten Japan or rather prime minister Koizumi in trouble with other Asian nations as it is dedicated to Japanese War Heroes. A group that includes people who are considered war criminals elsewhere... (the sheer mentioning of the name here, will ensure my blog being banned from Chinese web browsing forever...)

A Sakura Viewing Cruise through Asakusa, followed by a visit for a shrine/market (this one is pretty famous too, but of course I forgot the name...

Shopping in Shinjuku

A visit to Tokyo Tower - the Eiffel Tower of Tokyo, with a pretty grand view...

And finally a visit to a Sumo tournament! This was a school activity, we were quite lucky that their happened to be a free/open to the public tournament very close to our school last week. It was quite a treat to sit in the grass eating take out sushi while seeing the big boys getting it on... I should have some good pictures of this available at some point, including one of Carrie & I posing with one of the wrestlers.

Food: I've decided to give food a special mention, as I've had a lot of it and most of it has been very very good. Just tonight i probably had the best Tuna I have ever eaten in a Sushi restaurant close to our local train station. They keep their own salt water tank in the store, so the fish really is as fresh as it gets I guess. The place itself was neat as well, laid out like a conveyor belt sushi place, no belt however, but sushi chefs attending to your every wish directly, preparing every piece right there. This is probably not a big deal here, but pretty impressive to me and as noted, most of all very very tasty... Other treats I have tried include:

Natto-sushi-roles, a unique and unforgettable Japanese experience of fermented soybeans served with rice and seaweed. Natto smells like old sneakers and the taste is not that different, so OK, Natto might have been a one time experience.

Okinomiyaki, a type of do-it-yourself-at-your-table omelet. Very good.

Sukiyaki, another do-it-yourself-at-your-table thing, this time all you can eat Meat & Veggies grilled. (To give you an idea: this is where I would have taken my old MRF team out to dinner, the boys would have loved this place...)

Yukiniku, meat, onions, some sauce, rice -- very good...

Curry, lots of Japanese Curry, which interestingly is more like the danish version of Curry than any other Asian version I know...

and, I confess, a decent amount of Starbucks, which happens to be close to school (although actually they are everywhere here) and which is just too tempting in the morning. I am however happy to say that the 6 USD Tokyo Latte is a myth. A tall (12oz) Latte will set you back 340YEN, aka 3 USD and hence pretty much the same as in the US. In general i have found many things like groceries and eating out (depending on the restaurant of course) surprisingly reasonable compared to the JP prices horror stories I had heard, it's really not that different/much more expensive...

I'll finish this entry with a wonderful picture of an English language menu we found at a small curry place in Kamakura. Mind you that most places do not have English language menus, so this one is really quite novel/impressive in that regard -- it's also quite entertaining in others, such as the listing of cold "Bear"...

Mujirushi

2006-04-03T05:48:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make: I am addicted. To Mujirushi, also known as Muji* in it's western locations (primarily UK and a few other countries in the EU). Mujirushi means "no name" and it is a store that sells what they call "no brand goods". Other people might describe it as the Ikea of Japan and I must confess that i fear that if I lived in Japan my place would look like a Mujirushi showcase, just like my old place looked like an Ikea showcase... I'm detecting a pattern here. Anyway, i must also confess, that i am a happy addict - if there is a cure, I don't want it, i just love love love that store... My language school coordinators** were so nice to point me to the flagship Tokyo location earlier today -- there is a about a million of them here -- but only one that goes over three floors -- the one located in Yurakucho, which is conveniently situated on of 'my' train lines, albeit over an hour from my house (which on the other hand is right next door in Tokyo terms). So, I spent about 3 hours in shopping heaven today, i had to really, because it was rush hour and i had to wait for it to pass in order to not end like a danish sardine on the way home on the train, really that was the only reason, I swear...

Check out Mujirushi @ Yurakucho here:
www.mujiyurakucho.com/
(the left column links will show you the goods)

* Interestingly i also learned today that the westernized name doesn't necessarily make that much sense: in japanese that name Mujirushi is made up of two kanjis: "mu" (no/nothing) & "jirushi" (name/brand), so the Muji abbreviation is sort of butchered.

** By the way: They didn't seem to quite share my excitement, they're probably wondering why western people swoon over the equivalent to the Gap or so. Never mind, more Muji for me.

Tokyo Touchdown

2006-03-31T05:08:00.000-08:00

I made it! I am in Tokyo -- at last! Yay!!!

After 7 days I was ready and happy to leave Shanghai yesterday morning. Don't get this wrong: I loved visiting China, but will admit that i was also ready for a break from 'chinese hospitality', by which i mean: dealing with hordes of people pushing you around, stepping on you on the street/in the subway/everywhere; pulling your sleeve/your bag/your hair in order to get you into their shop; spitting on your shoes (spitting is considered a healthy habit), and grumbling at you that you have to pay 3 times the price because you are foreign, with a look of "and i really hope you leave my establishment soon"... I don't think most of this is meant in a bad way, just that chinese manners are very different from anything western, so it was hard to figure out "what was going on" most of the time without a translator/more time to learn the rules -- making it a bit taxing after a while, but a great experience and certainly very interesting. I was also quite looking forward to regaining access to free press, something i guess we really take for granted most of the time and not something i would have expected to miss so soon, but after a week of watching the CCTV (Chinese Television) English News you start to appreciate having two sides to a story and not having to listen to propaganda-fied versions of daily events that stress how China's handling of any given situation is far better than any western/other approach. Finally there's the whole internet access thing: I couldn't load my own blog at any time while in CN, update it yes, read it no... all very interesting, but also nice to be away from again :)

My trip here was quite eventful in the sense that after a week of very limited contact/conversations with other travellers [-- let me elaborate a bit on this: China is not exactly a backpacker mecca yet, so there aren't really that many people around to meet as most people travel in big organized groups. The other impediment is the fact that a lot, not all but A LOT, of (male) western travellers are not there to befriend western women, if you know what i mean -- it's a bit sad really imho.) so, I felt almost overwhelmed by the amount of people I have met within the last 24h: The belgian dude on the flight, the korean dude on the next flight, Denise the Canadian girl in last night's hotel shuttle (-- who teaches english in Kyoto and who has promised to give my Mom and I a guided tour during Mom's Golden Week visit), Reiko the language school event coordinator who picked us up from the airport and provided 3 hours of transfer bus entertainment, and finally Carrie and Theron ("Tag"), my fellow language school newbies from the State Department/Foreign Service in DC (- it's certainly good to know that my chosen school finds official US approval... ;)).

We arrived at our Residence/Dorm early this afternoon. I've never lived in a dorm before (-- I was a spoiled Uni student with my own Studio thanks to east german/berlin rental rates...), but this is everyhting i imagine a japanese dorm to be. I have a 2 by 4 meter room, with a bed, desk (futon!), bookcase, open-closet-type-thing and micro fridge. Bathrooms down the hall, showers & shared kitchen on the first floor. Oh and of course everyone takes their shoes of right at the main door/lobby and slips in to the mandatory slippers, of which I must of course purchase a Hello-Kitty pair. The Residence is located in a suburb called Matsudo, northwest (I think!) of central Tokyo and is apparently a bit of an attraction here as it is the only place in the area to host (crazy) foreigners... Around 100 people live here, so it is a bit larger than expected, but certainly provides ample possibility for socializing (= I have already forgotten the names of all the people I met today.)

After check-in, lunch and general unpacking, Carrie, Tag and I ventured to Ueno Park where Cherry Blossom Season/viewing has just started. We were a bit concerned about arriving there after dark (will we be able to see anything?!), but our dorm manager assured us that going at night was almost better, because they have "lighto-uppo" and a great deal of partying going on, and maybe we should get drunk before we go... We skipped the latter, hopped on the subway and arrived to discover that "lighto-uppo" means that red lanterns are stringed under the trees, making it really quite pretty in the dark as well. We also discovered that he wasn't joking about the partying, people were having very wet picnics under the trees and there were heavy Sake fumes in the air.

We're quite lucky: Cherry Blossom Season has indeed just started, with the trees currently being 50% in bloom according to official reports from the national meteorological institute. I'm hoping that this means we still a few weeks of blossoms to go.

Well it's time for me to turn in - my new US friends have planned a great day trip tomorrow morning, to a place where the first Shogun to unite JP set up his capital (-- the city name currently escapes me) promising no less than 65 temples, so I have a busy day ahead!

Tokyo Time

2006-03-29T04:03:00.000-08:00

Last night in Shanghai - tomorrow I will travel to Tokyo via Seoul, Korea (and yes, I am hoping for kimchi and or Korean barbecue during my lay-over ;)). I'm pretty excited about finally getting to Tokyo and to my new little temporary home (which supposedly includes free internet access - whoa hoa!).

I felt kinda weird today and i realized that i was feeling homesick, something I haven't experienced in a long time and something I was sort of hoping to re-discover on this trip, because i was starting to wonder if you get to a point where you just never feel homesick. Not so, at least not for me, what a relief. So, I've been relishing the feeling today, even if it is not all that pleasant, just because it is such a good reminder of who I really am and what really matters to me: today, i am just very undeniably white and European, and it feels good to feel so at home in that identity, even if it puts me at odds with pretty much everyone else here...

Hello Lady DVD, Bag? or Paging Ryan

2006-03-27T02:41:00.000-08:00

Shanghai time is passing in blur of sights and scenery. Noise is everywhere, mostly out of any range that I would understand, but once in a while cutting the air with a few staccato words like the above: Watch, Bag, DVD? Beatiful Lady, what you like? or Shoeshine? Shoeshine? I look at my sneakers, walk on and the moment passes, turning the noise back in to a magic wall of sound that surrounds me like green tea poky stick jello.

I've spent the last few days checking out most of Shanghai's main sights: The Old City (this was the China Town within China experience) with the Temple of the City God and the Yuyuan Gardens (a Ming dynasty garden, of which I must have a mio. photos, including one of me that i after much pleading convinced a chinese lady to take), The City Planning Center (a very fascinating testament to Shanghai's most recent urban development and and even more fascinating preview of it's next 20 years), the Shanghai Museum (where they keep "all the old stuff", bronzes, ceramics, jade and other good stuff from the last 6000(!) years), Xintiandi (a new part of the city made to look old and pretty, so that tourists don't have to deal with the real old and dirty stuff), The Moca (the Museum of Contemporary Art currently featuring an exhibit called "Fiction @ Love" -- the title says it all, just as you would expect this is manga bunnies with blinking plush hearts chanting korean lullabies and the like), People's Square (it's big and there's a lot of people in it, a good number of Shanghai's 17 mio. people seem to be hustling and bustling around here), Nanjing Lu (The oldest shopping street, a pedestrian zone with unlimited malls and craziness included), The Bund (the promenade that goes along the Huangpu river and faces the new Pudon development, Shanghai's "new" skyline, the Bund side itself houses the "old" (1930's skyline) and finally the "French Concession" (the part of town that the french were once granted the rights to, and which now houses all sorts of hipness in the shape of bars, restaurants, shops along plane tree lined streets.
I feel pretty succesful on the sightseeing part, only having a few more things left to go, such as the very important visit to a local SPA for example... however what i have enjoyed the most so far, is probably just being here, just observing and trying to understand this place.

During my first two days here i realized that this is probably the first time i've ever been somewhere, where i couldn't blend in, even if i wanted to. During my highschool year in Brazil i quickly figured out that there are enough blond, german immigrant descent, south americans (note: see mr. kufeld :)) to pass for one if you're able to mutter a few local words. Here however there is nowhere to hide, being blonde and caucassian) and it was a bit of a shock to have that many people staring at me, approaching me and yelling random things at me that i didn't understand (mostly trying to sell sh.. -- they're good at that), "shock" might be a strong word, but let's just say that it was a big shift from being in a laid back australian surf oasis where people couldn't care less. Second, for the spoiled linguista in me, it took a while to accept the fact that i really didn't understand a single word -- not a bit here and there, a word or two, but nothing, nada, zip (and this is where i started thinking about Mikhail's friend Ryan, who actually speaks chinese, and how brilliant it must be to travel around here with him). Luckily this phase passed rather quickly, almost too quickly -- it surprised me a bit how quickly the brain gets used to not only not understanding anyhting, but to not caring that it doesn't understand anyhting, and to enter a state of blissful ignorance where everything that exists is noise, visuals and new rules of survival, such as:

traffic lights are generally useful, they however do not apply to scooters, bicycles and taxis. Any of these will readily kill you while crossing at green. I'll elaborate on the scooter part: if at anytime you hear a scooter behind you: *jump*, in some direction, any direction really, a near death experience is approaching at lightening speed.

90% og beijing art students have relocated to Shanghai, where they are now desperately trying to get-by, by hosting an art exhibit, which you must come see - NOW.

sneakers are prime targets for shoe shine.

shanghainese people like egg in their food, doesn't matter the meal or the food (from beef stew to coconut bun) they will get egg into it (people with egg allerigies, like me, beware!)

the best way for western college students to make money in china is through modeling. at any time, expect a lingerie clad, potate nosed, midwestern gal to look down at you from a billboard with a look that is more "gee, i hope my parents didn't book that china trip yet" than "check out the hot ensemble".

beauty ideals indeed do vary: goal number is to be whiter than white and creams, lotions and special water will make you so. ear-widening surgery is a good thing (still don't know which direction this refers to?!). TV is a prime way to sell what looks like a bob-the-builder helmet with screws inside it, wired to an elictric current, that will make you mane grow to fabio dimensions (all of this is certified by professor dr. greenfeld, how works is a lab situated in something that looks like a scottish castle and who has many, many pretty blond assistants who marvel his skills.

And I could go on (and I might, at a later point :) - but in between 'learning' all of these things, there are other little moments of utter brilliance, like the english woman approaching me in the French Concesssion asking if I was lost (yes! - but not in a way you can help cure :)) or the little girl in the department store who shrieked with joy and giggles over my (blond) hair (-- while her parents where desperately trying to make her behave more 'appropriately') or the girl from the boonna cafe, who came running after me to give back what was meant to be her tip... ah yes, moments of sheer joy.

I have so much more to say, but am starting to fade a bit, after having spent the equivalent of 3 big mac value meals on the internet time for this update (don't ask how I know...). Next to me, the hotel cafe personel is engaging in a favorite chinese pastime (i'm speculating here, admitted) and are ripping cds like crazy, on the 'work' computer -- that's the way we like it. I am off to take some snapshots of the night-lit Bund and to prep for tomorrow, which will take me out for some more shopping (oh - did i forget to mention that the #1 activity in Shanghai, above any and all other popular activities, is shopping? - this place is hell, girls... :)) and to my chinese aroma-oil massage here:
dragonfly massge.

Seattle Gloom

2006-03-26T03:24:00.000-08:00

Here I am Shanghai prepping my next blog entry when I discover that within a mile of my old house in Seattle some crazy person goes and shoots 6 people at a party... makes Cyclone Larry and Shanghai's latest bird flu scare seem like peaceful everyday events, doesn't it?!

Post AU Update: The Big Storm

2006-03-23T17:26:00.000-08:00

Just a quick response to the cyclone Larry questions: no it did not hit me while in Byron Bay (-- which is down below/south of Brisbane) - however it did hit pretty much all the places we had just been too in the weeks before (spooky!) and it did send a heavy influx of backpackers into Byron Bay who were trying to escape the bad weather. The only Byron impact was a slightly elevated surf (what a pity, he he), and even that was debated by the locals in regards to whether it could really be blamed on Larry or not.

Shanghai Calling

2006-03-23T16:57:00.001-08:00

Made it to Shanghai yesterday after a fun, but maybe a bit too long trip through Kuala Lumpur (- where i learned some Malay: Bagasi means luggage, great, eh?!). I was a bit curious about how I was going to find my hostel here, as the from-the-airport directions were a bit vague and i don't really speak any shangaiese or mandarin for that matter. However all went well, especially after i dicovered that large parts of the extended city is laid out quite similar to East Berlin (-- where i lived during my college years). There is something about plan economy urbanization that never fails when it comes to "the subway entrance will be in the most non-descript building on this block of houses". So, I made it and even managed to get off the right subway stop in only two attempts -- on the first one i never made it to the door of the train before it slammed shut due to rush hour chaos, on the second i had learned that it is totally legit to push, fight and hit people with you 18k bag if you are trying to get off the train... good little intro to Asia after having been very relaxed in the Australia outback for a bit!

After checking in to my luxury room (-- i decided to splurge on the $38/day private room with air-con & tv, rather than bunk it (-- please don't hate me, hard core backpackers out there!)) i took my first stroll along The Bund, walking along the Huangpu river that seperating east & west Shanghai and admiring the Shanghai skyline. After that i ventured in to the Old City, which is sort of like a China Town within a chinese city, however, I'll add more about this later, as I am about to head out for today.

Shanghai Baby

2006-03-21T04:30:00.000-08:00

Forgot to note on my last post: tomorrow morning I am off to Shanghai, China! In only a few hours, I'll start the plane trek that will take me from Ballina to Sydney, from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur and from Kuala Lumpur to Shanghai. I'm looking forward to my first visit to China, betting that it will be a bit of a culture shock after spending a week in AU surf paradise... stay tuned!

Wetties, Rashies and Boardies or Surfing the Bay

2006-03-21T04:19:00.000-08:00

My last post was going to be the final Byron Bay update, but after my surf lesson today I just have to done another one. I learned a few things today, apart from standing up on the board on my own, number one: I love surfing, or I should say, I love trying to surf (to pay proper respect to my friends who actually do surf), number two: surfing gets even better when adding the aussie vebal quaintness, when a wetsuit becomes a "wettie", a rash shirt a "rashie" and board shorts "boardies" - viva Australia!

I had so much fun today, I am truly not a very gifted surfer -- mind you, I didn't expect that (the only reason that I am a good snowboarder is that I practiced, practiced and practiced...) -- but still it is one of the best and most fun things i have started learning over the last year and I love every minute of it, even when these are mostly spent with my head under water. So, today was a great success -- and i am not giving up, one day I will be a surfer, I know it.

Byron Bay - The Sequel

2006-03-20T15:13:00.000-08:00

A few of you have asked what I am up to here in Byron - and apart from desperately trying to upload photos (-- however blogger's photo upload is experiencing an upload malfunction) -- my time is spent something like this:

morning: spinning (studio cycling) class with Monique

afternoon: take your pick from any two of these: kayaking/snorkeling/surfing/reading on the beach/shopping/sightseeing the hinterland

evening: barbecuing, movies, night club bouncing

quite rough, I know...

I've been quite excited about this 'program' as it has allowed me to pick up several new skills in no time. Spinning for example, is something I had never done before and have been a bit weary of, given my general tendency to feel bored when cycling long distance, however it's turned out to be quite addictive and fun. It's also a darn good workout, so for any of you out there contemplating how to address the amazon/google/yahoo-15 before bikini season this year -> this is what you have been looking for.

Sea kayaking here is excellent for two reasons: first the surf is great pretty much everywhere and yes you can actually ride waves in a kayak and it is pretty fun, second, dolphins galore. We went out yesterday and for half an hour just sat on the water watching the dolphins jumping in front of us, next to us, everywhere. I was most fascinated by how much they seem to like waves: jumping out of them and 'surfing' them on their backs. Towards the end they came right up to us and did a few rounds around the kayak to say hello - very cool.

Snorkeling, the Byron Bay Marine Park is where the southern, cooler, currents meet the northern, tropical, currents, which makes for great snorkeling albeit lacking the coral of the GB reef. It's been fun to see an abundance of larger fish: eagle rays, leopard sharks (these do not have teeth I hear, eh hope...) and several large see turtles that in these waters seem to be patient with visitors and just hang out while people dive/snorkel around them.

Surfing, alas, my surf lesson will be later today, so no real update on this one yet -- if it goes anything like my last lesson, it will be a story about swimming more so than surfing...

I've also been able to add a new job experience to my resume: Night Club bouncer. Monique and I worked the doors at Cheeky's this past Saturday and it was a riot. They cater mainly to the backpacker crowd, so it was a good chance to talk to people from all over them world, which led to some fun observations, such as, for example, that Fabio haircuts are really popular among 20-year-olds in Sweden at the moment (unfortunately I never found out why! :)

Byron Bay

2006-03-18T16:36:00.000-08:00

We've made it - to our final AU destination, the quaint township of Byron Bay situated at the very far north of the NSW coast (in other words just below QLD and Brisbane).

Byron is a surf/beach/alternative community and also happens to be where Monique, my former high school exchange 'sister' lives. It's a wonderful experience to be here with 'family', very relaxing and very cool as Monique is also a bit of a local celebrity, being the owner of Byron's most popular night club Cheeky Monkey's.

Byron Bay - Wreck Beach with Mount Warning in the background

Whitsunday Wonderful

2006-03-18T16:02:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday the 7th we embarked on our Whitsunday cruise aboard the majestic Condor, a maxi racing yacht (i.e. a huge sailing machine -- 23 meters long). We were to be on board for 3 days with 12 fellow travelers and a crew of 4 taking care of us, the sailing and keeping the sharks away (just joking about the last part).

The 74 Whitsunday Islands make up a Maritime National Park on/within The Great Barrier Reef, which makes for great sailing and adventure territory and the type of cruise we went on is a typical way to explore the region. And what a great way -- we had heard from quite a few people that their Whitsunday Cruise was the highlight of their AU trip and we now understand why. Basically the entire marine park looks like one of those Bounty (chocolate) commercials from the eighties - turquoise bays, white sandy beaches, nothing around but a few yachts and people having a good time.

Our yacht cruised at a leisurely pace from island to island, with breaks for snorkeling, beach walking and swimming, only interrupted by food breaks when the crew served us goodies fresh off the barbie (yes, they actually call it that, but no, they mostly do not grill shrimp...). It was pure relaxation and just a wonderful vacation experience.

Hmm. Since I know you are all in to wildlife stories, I should probably add a bit of info on what we saw and / or avoided... The snorkeling was indeed spectacular (it's the G.B. Reef after all) - better than anything I have seen before, tons and tons of fish that will swim with and next to you and the reed itself is just beautiful, so many colors, so many different types of coral. We also swam with turtles and had the chance to see dolphins and sharks, the latter we lured to the boat at night with flood lights and grilled chicken. So what did we avoid? Well, they will make you wear a so called stinger-suit when swimming (and you will want to wear it!) in order to avoid a couple of scary jellyfish, mostly the Irukandjis which are know to cause excruciating pain and possibly death, while being tiny and invisible... I won't go in to more detail on the deadly dangers of the AU tropical waters (-- I believe Mikhail's blog has more info, if you really want it) but will say that this suddenly made me feel much better about the blue bottles we encountered in Sydney, as these will 'only' cause excruciating pain...

coastal service part 2 - queensland (QLD) coast towards the whitsundays

2006-03-18T15:35:00.000-08:00

We left Cape Trib Sunday night about 2 weeks ago now. Plan was to drive the beloved wicked (our "cowboy delux" camper van) down to the "Whitsundays" a collection of beautiful, lush and green islands that sit smack dab in the middle of the great barrier reef, about 800 KM south of Cairns.

The drive itself included certain challenges, we had gotten fairly used to the whole 'driving on the wrong side of the road' thing in NZ, but it can be a very different experience on narrow coastal roads in the middle of a tropical storm... A few of you have commented in e-mails and phone calls, that you had heard of flooding and massive rains in NE Australia, let's just say that we can confirm that these events took place. We did have a bit of a discussion about what would be the best approach to take, if/when we get stuck on a flooded road (we saw up to about 30 cm / 1 foot of water on the roads at times) within a croc zone - do you get out and try to push? Or do you just wait for the water (and potential crocs) to go away?!

We reached our weather low point near "Tully", a place we got to late at night Sunday and where we decided to camp for the night, because we just couldn't take it anymore. After a good night's sleep we ventured out for breakfast, only to discover from the local tourist info material that we had in fact spent the night in the place that has officially been declared 'Australia's Wettest Place', suffering the largest amount of rain per year :) -- Ironically it was bright and sunny that morning, however I must not forget to mention that Tully is also the home of "The Large Gumboot" - the Australians seem obsessed with large objects to be placed at the town entrance (the large squash, the large mango, the large you-name-it) an interesting fact which Carmine had kindly informed me about back in Seattle.

The further south we got, the more the weather cleared and we drove through landscapes that surprised us by looking more like African Savannah (or what we would expect that to look like I should say, never having been..) than 'the outback' - something that was later confirmed by one of our Whitsunday sailing mates, who had just come from the Kruger National Park in SA. Not entirely unexpected probably given that we were driving along the coast and that this region was formerly known as "the wet tropics", a name they recently changed, which is probably a good thing for the local tourism industry...

Updates, Updates, Updates to come...

2006-03-15T23:53:00.000-08:00

I've been offline for a little while (-- what a nice experience!) but have now arrived at Monique's house in Byron Bay. Staying here includes the luxury of having limitless internet at hand and a chance to upload more photos, so stay tuned dear readers...

James Blunt

2006-03-04T20:04:00.000-08:00

I wanted to add a comment on our trip's "sound track": James Blunt is the tune of the day down under and we have taken quite a liking to it. Check him out if you haven't already. Oh and for some reason they are also really in to the "Curious George" sound track (Jack Johnson)...

Into the Wild - Cairns, Kuranda & "Cape Trib"

2006-03-04T19:18:00.000-08:00

Just a quick little note to let you know that we have made it up to the north end of the Australian east coast (and no, we didn't drive all that way so quickly - we flew up to Cairns and will be driving back down, so that we can end up in Byron Bay with Monique for the last part of our AU visit.)

After spending a day in Cairns, which was probably the most touristy place we've been so far (people trying to sell you "the OZ adventure" on every corner), we spent a day in the Kuranda Rain Forest via Skyrail (sort of like a ski lift gondola) & Scenic railroad, which was our intro to the rain forest. Turns out, some of the world's oldest rain forest is right here and even though it seems like there is plenty of it, i actualy only takes up 0.01% of the Australian continent (statistic fact of the day :). In Kuranda we also got to cuddle Koalas - yay! - something we have extremely cute pictures of which i will post when i get a chance.

From the Kuranda experience, we've driven north so that we are now in "Cape Tribulation", which is pretty much as far north as you can go without a 4-wheel drive. This place is the home of the Daintree rain forest, Kuranda's older brother by several million years and the place is spectacular. Lush green rain forest everywhere and beautiful white sandy beaches. No swimming however, due to deadly Box Jellyfish and Crocodiles! To give you a bit of imagery, this is the campground where we stayed last night : Cape Trib Camping

Pictures!

2006-03-01T04:51:00.000-08:00

Ok folks, pictures have been posted (see entries below) - enjoy!

Terra Australis

2006-03-01T03:51:00.000-08:00

By way of third party complaints of blog update infrequency have reached me - alas, I must confess to being so smitten with our latest destination that I simply have not had the time to create a blog entry worthy of this continent... It is simply "grossartig" (German word for those not knowing :) in so many ways.

Anyway, we have indeed arrived in Sydney after a quick little 3.5 hour plane hop from New Zealand. Bjoern, one of our kind hosts here, picked us up from the airport and immediately after that introduced us to the 'Australian Way of Life': drinking cold beer on the deck while watching the parrots fly by, ah yes, quite pleasing in many ways!

Agnes, Bjoern & Cille, the family we are staying with, live in what is called 'the northern beaches' more specifically in Narrabeen beach, known as one of Sydney's prime surf spots. As stated, it is 'wild' here - being a suburb and all Narrabeen features a decent amount of lush greenery (of exotic kind seen with EU eyes) and plenty of wildlife of equally exotic nature. Mind you, the phone book delivery here includes a special book on which potentially lethal insects and critters to avoid while enjoying the local scenery (to be honest however, we haven't seen any snakes yet, just a few spiders and a decent amount of bats, the latter however in the botanical garden, which i guess doesn't really count ;)

Here is what we have been up to so far:

Tuesday: Visit to downtown Sydney: arriving to breathtaking views via Ferry from Manly (which is close to where we are staying) and spending the day hiking through the city from The Opera House, to The Rocks, to Harbour Bridge, the Observatory, George St, Hyde Park, Botanical Gardens and back to the Opera House for sunset cocktails and dinner (which included a crocodile + kangaroo appetizer!)

Wednesday: Beach day: hiking the beaches of Narrabeen and Dee Why, learning what rock pools is and trying to be cool with the local surf crowd (ok, maybe not so much, but it was worth a try...)

Up next: tomorrow Bjoern & Agnes will be taking us to the Kuringai National Park, which should be both quite exciting and exotic -- i recommend going to their website and/or checking out this link under which you'll find a list of all animals found in the park...

And now, I am off to work on adding some pictures - stay tuned!

Here we go - pictures! ->

I-heart-NZ

2006-02-26T11:58:00.000-08:00

New Zealand Vital Stats

Human Population: 3,6 million
Number of Sheep: 49,5 million
Number of Lord of the Rings movie filming locations: 150
Number of LOTR locations visited/sighted by M&M: 5
Most adored citizen (or so it seems): Peter Jackson (please pronounce 'Peta Jaeksen')

The time for us has come to continue on to Australia after our brief NZ stop over. If I were to sum up this visit in one sentence, it would be "I'll be back!" - it's simply magnificent here: gorgeous landscapes of all kinds, lots of fun things to do and very very friendly Kiwis (the people, not the birds, those seem to have been in hiding ever since we arrived.) We're sad to be leaving so soon, but also very excited about going to Sydney and seeing Bjoern & Agnes later today. Once we get to their house I hope to get the chance to upload some photos, but for now I'll add some links below to some of the NZ treats we have been exposed to.

Day 1 - visit to Hobbiton
Day 2 - driving/hiking the Volcanic Loop (seeing "Mt. Doom", "Slopes of Mordor", "Ilthien", "Meads Wall")
Day 3 - visit to the Polynesian Spa in Rotorua (ladies, you have to try this!) + an (yet another) unsuccesful attempt at Kiwi sighting

-- the Nissan Pulsar, our fine NZ companion.

-- first sighting of Mt. Doom!

-- Meads Wall, Mt. Doom in the background

-- Your average Mordor landscape

-- Just scenic :)

-- Looking for Elves (close to where Camp Ithilien was filmed)

One more NZ post: Scotch for Dinner

2006-02-26T00:42:00.000-08:00

Just a last brief update on my favorite subject: The NZ Language

Out for dinner on Saturday night, waitress approaches.

W: Tonight's special is a scotch, with two side salads and a complimentary glass of wine
M: Huh???!
W: Scotch, the meat, it's a type of steak
...

Hobbits! Hobbits everywhere...

2006-02-24T12:28:00.000-08:00

Good news folks, we found the hobbits! And we have danced under the party tree (well almost).Unfortunately my network time is running out here, so you'll have to wait for the full story (and green hilly pictures of Hobbit holes!)

3/1 Update - finally adding pcitures:

"Do not throw Rubbish into the Toilet"

2006-02-24T12:24:00.000-08:00

Welcome to NZ! We managed to board our flight after some complications, mostly related to me not understanding the local language - conversation snippet:

Flight Attendant: We must sign your boarding pass
Maiken: huh?
FA: We must sign it
M: Why?
FA: You have to show it to us - we must *sight" it...
M: aaah!

So after learning how to speak New Zealandish, everything has been fine. I loved the plabe signage too - the title above being my favorite...

The Itinerary!

2006-02-21T19:01:00.000-08:00

Here it is - the so far final dates for when I will be where for the next six months. Visitors welcome at any and all times en route!

(2.22) 2.24 - 2.27 New Zealand
On the road with rental car from:
www.zoomrentals.co.nz

2.27 - 3.22 Australia

Sydney:
visiting Bjoern Schliebitz an old Amazon.de friend!

Cairns, Whitsundays, General Queensland coast:
On the road with our rental from Wicked

Byron Bay:
Visiting Monique who was an exchange student at my house in Denmark in 1991! She now owns and runs this fun little place Cheeky Monkey's in Byron Bay

3.23 - 3.30 China / Shanghai
(more details to come later)

3.30 - 7.2 Japan / Tokyo
(more details to come)

7.14 - 8.30 Europe [Denmark, Germany, UK, Ireland, France]
(more details to come)

Making Plans

2006-02-21T18:44:00.000-08:00

So, there was a time when I thought that taking time off meant relaxtion - I couldn't have been more wrong!

This last week has been just crazy, possibly because I jumped in to this with a sense of 'no time to loose'. It's been good getting all of this stuff done quickly though and looks like we are actually ready for take off tomorrow.

Since i haven't completely shed my former PM life and personality here's a brief summary of action items completed in the last 10 days (wow! It's almost a Status Report!)

finished up everything at work (I hope - he he) and wrapped up 7 years of 'Zon.

sold excess belongings

moved out of apartment

moved in to storage container

rendered apartment "monica clean"

drove 1200 miles to California (like this) in 36 hours [this included a birthday party in SF].

completed no less than 50 (i am not joking!) TO-DOs along the lines of to booking tickets/hotels/shuttles, getting insurance, filing taxes, calling banks/doctors/you name it.

wrapped 2 birthday presents for my sisters boyfriend

enjoyed a walk on the beach... (finally!)

next: posting the itinerary!

Coastal Service

2006-02-21T18:40:00.000-08:00

We made it - down the coast to the OC in the Super Focus. Mikhail has an extensive description of the drive on his blog, which i'll take the liberty of leveraging: Seregine's 2006 Worldtour

Care of Hansen Bros.

2006-02-17T08:38:00.000-08:00

Friendly people named Hansen have taken over the care of (almost) all my earthly belongings - this is a long standing family tradition, albeit not with the same set of Hansens... we're branching out - going global I guess.

Tuesday Morning in Seattle

2006-02-16T23:39:00.000-08:00

Going to the Pike Place Market to pick up presents, mountains coming out as a backdrop for a gleamning golden sound, paul simon pops into my head:

You just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don’t need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
Hop on the bus, Gus
You don’t need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free

You just slip out the back, Jack...

You just slip out the back, Jack...

The Return

2006-01-24T21:17:00.000-08:00

To all of your true followers of this most important blog: 2006 marks the return of it to an active state. What can I say really? 2005 was a great and exciting year, lots of things happened, lots of travel was done, lots was learned -- however I remain firmly committed to making 2006 an even better year, true to the new years challenge I found on some other blog: "living life with intention" (link forgotten) I'm not exactly sure what that means yet, but I am committed to finding out...
BTW. The picture above is from our new years trip to Mt. Bachelor in Oregon, great mountain, great snow and beautiful high dessert landscapes to and from, as in this picture where the sun broke through the rainy dark sky, suddenly, unexpectedly...

Solvang - or - Denmark, CA [7/14]

2005-07-21T09:36:00.000-07:00

Solvang also known as the "Danish Capital of America" was a no miss stop on our trip. I've been to Solvang before and it really is, well, quaint. It doesn't look much like modern Denmark, but it certainly does look like the Denmark that goes with a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale - so good enough. Surprisingly to me, there were also quite a few Danes in town this time. Solvang has an interesting tourist demographic, its visitors can be divided into to roughly 3 categories:
1. Senior Citizens or air-conditioned bus trips
2. Danes who've seen Solvang on TV at home and want to check it out (one of those great tourism mysteries: why go around the world to see something that looks like home?)
3. People who are only there for the Wine (country)
Seems that after the movie Sideways the latter category is slowly taking over, which is a bad thing for people like me coming for the abundant Danish treats , but probably a good thing for the towns general economic development.

Speaking of treats, we were proud to say that we did make it to Mortensen's Danish Bakery. This was a key destination on our trip, as it is run by relatives of one of my Mom's friends. They weren't there to meet us in person, but their Rom-kugler get two thumbs up. Another important Solvang treat destination is Ingeborg's where they take pride in feature almost any possible kind of Danish licorice candy - a feast for the licorice connoisseur, and probably horrifying to anyone else (i should note that they also sell Danish chocolates, which are probably more agreeable to most).

While in Solvang we had the great luck to stay in the "Denmark Cabin" featured here - lucky us - imagine if they had given us the Sweden cabin? (silly Danish joke - sorry ;)

California Missions / El Camino Real [7/12-15]

2005-07-20T13:37:00.000-07:00

Given our success with the Oregon Lighthouses we set out to see as many California Missions as possible on our way down the coast. There's 21 California Missions that a situated along and linked together by the historic "Camino Real" - quoting this Camino Real Website & borrowing their overview map:

"The history of the El Camino Real and its bells, is quite interesting. At the same time that the American colonies were rebelling against England, a handful of Spaniards and Mexicans established outposts up the California coast. The first was established in 1769 at San Diego, when they established a fortress and a Franciscan mission. From that point, a series of small self-reliant religious missions were established. Each was a day's travel apart and linked by El Camino Real, Overall, El Camino Real ("The King's Highway") linked 21 missions, pueblos and four presidios from San Diego to Sonoma."

21 turned out to be quite a bit to visit, especially since the Camino Real follows the current 101 highway more closely so than the 1/PCH that was our chosen travel route. Another challenge not to be underestimated, were the mission visits themselves. The Missions are not state parks, but belong to and are run by the Catholic church, which is very noticeable in their museums and in particular in their gift shops, this can be a bit of a trial for the average agnostic Dane...

Here are the 6 we did make it to:

San Juan Bautista - couldn't miss this one for the Hitchcock bonus: this is were the shot the mission scenes for vertigo (although they did tweak it a bit, adding a tower that doesn't actually exist). This one also comes with a particularly lovely Mexican style little village alongside it, which is where we found the Heavenly Espresso shop, which' sign is pictured above...

San Carlos Borromeo de Carmel this one is situated on the outskirts of Carmel and was our favorite in terms of outside beauty -- Interestingly we found that all of the missions we visited were known for being "the most beautiful of all California mission" ... but this one really was amazingly pretty, with a gorgeous amount of colorful flowers surrounding it.

San Luis Obispo de Tolosa - can't say much about this one except for liking the painted interior of the church and maybe also worth mentioning, this was the first one to feature substantial information about the Chumash people who lived in the area before the mission was erected.

Santa Ines - situated at the edge of town in Solvang and next to one of the Danish bakeries, this one came with a delicious smell of Danish pastry while visiting the cemetery, as well as a very well narrated tour of the grounds, pointing out sites of former buildings etc.

Santa Barbara - the beautiful Santa Barbara. One thing we noticed was that as we traveled further south the missions were getting bigger and more costly to visit... Santa Barbara really couldn't keep up with the other missions, although it again was claimed to be the 'most beautiful of California missions'.

San Juan Capistrano - "the Jewel of the Missions" and right down the road from my sisters house in the OC. The church is heavily damaged by the 1812 earthquake as can be seen in this picture, but otherwise the largest missions we stopped at.

Hearst Castle [7/13 - CA]

2005-07-20T12:50:00.000-07:00

After some debating I've decided to give Mr. Hearst and his castle their own blog entry. The last time I came by this way (pretty much exactly 10 years ago - gulp!) we didn't bother to stop as our "young & hip" guidebook told us, that it was overpriced and not worth it -> wrong and what a pity - this is so much fun.
Visiting Hearst Castleis indeed pricy, we ended up paying a full $24 for the 'intro tour' [recommended for 'first time visitors' - they have a total of 5 different tours to choose from, because the place is so big] - however considering that the tour is 2.5 hours and considering which large 'operation' they have in place to make visits possible, it seems entirely justified.

The outside of the castle (which is really not one, but several buildings) is interesting seen with European eyes, it's a bit of an eclectic southern European style mish-mash, there's a bit of Gaudi, combined with some ancient Romans, combined with a bit of Notre Dame...[-- without wanting to criticize Julia Morgan, the castle's architect, who did an extremely fine job given the demands of her customer] The inside is an equally eclectic, but very impressive amassment of antiques and artworks from all other the world. What blew me away was the sheer number of objects that was brought to this remote location and hauled up this hillside at a time before the PCH - Pacific Coast Highway - was in service.

All in all an amazing collection of Art that Hearst had the luck to be able to acquire right after WW1, when most of Europe was broke and willing to sell out to fund rebuilding the continent - how else do you end up with the 600 years old hand carved oak interior of a French church? Or the ceiling of/from a palace on the Iberian peninsula? Oh and all the flags from the Sienna Palio - as seen in the shot of the dining room on the left. BTW. Notice the Ketchup bottles on the table? Apparently Hearst knew that he was one of the 3 richest people in America and hence figured, that since none of his guests had more money than he did, no need to impress anyone...

As you can tell I simply loved this visit, and much credit for that probably goes to our guide Steve (they wont let you walk around on your own - too risky in terms of stealing or breaking stuff) - he must have known pretty much any and all anecdotes or fun stories about Hearst and the castle which made this excursion very memorable. My very favorite 'room', was the one pictured here: it's the indoor swimming pool - which is entirely covered in 1/2'' x 1/2'' Italian class mosaic tile - what can I say besides I want one!

Monterey & Big Sur [7/12-13 - CA]

2005-07-20T11:58:00.001-07:00

From Palo Alto we were anxious to hit the coast again. The visit to silicon Valley had been worth it - Dad now knows where silicon Valley is... We hit the road towards Santa Cruz enjoying along the way the soft yellow hills, that so perfectly match what a Dane would call "Cowboy Landscape" - read: this is what the landscape looks like in European wild west novels and movies...

Our first stop on the way is the Mission San Juan Bautista, but since I am doing a separate entry on Missions, you'll have to wait for details on that one. We continue on for another 30 minutes or so of driving through strawberry fields - quite literally. This was the is smelling part of the trip, the air is full of sweet, ripe and happy strawberry smells - we however do not envy their picking crews who are hard at work under the California sun.

Marine layer comes back to meet us and we know we most be very close to Monterey and indeed so we are. Since we've decided to steer clear of too crazy crowds after our San Fran visit we cruise right by the city and head straight for the 17-Mile Drive that takes you around the tip of the Monterey Peninsula. At exactly 50 cents per mile ($8.50 is the fee to enter the drive) - it's a lot less crowded than the public areas but still very well visited.

It is a pretty drive - but what impressed us most were not the views (they are no different then in many other places along the coast) but the wildlife that seemed to be thriving with the many visitors (or to some extend almost enjoying the attention). My favorites were the seals shown in this picture that were lined up for a tanning session - what you can't see in the pictures is, that there were more seals waiting in the water to hit the beach as soon as someone would take off or go for a dip. I'd dare say that this most be the Seal version of Orange County...

Anyway, we were finally ready to visit what Dad considered the most important part of the 17-Mile Drive - the Pebble Beach golf course. We where wondering whether they would let visitors in, but of course they do... Only to serve them outrageously expensive drinks on their nice little deck overlooking the 18th hole. (Yes this is the deck you see in the background on TV, when they go for the green on 18). Unfortunately the golfing we got to watch wasn't really all that impressive - or let's put it this way, I wouldn't be intimidated to play this course [but then again, I did beat Dad when we played Newcastle in Bellevue, WA -- sorry Dad - had to rub it in :)]

On we went, passing through the pretty little town of Carmel with all of its pretty little shops (note to reader: this is were Clint Eastwood once ruled as mayor), passing by the Carmel Mission (more later) and then finally hitting the road into the real Big Sur. We knew it was going to be 'lonely' and boy was it ever. Miles and miles of beautiful, rugged coastline and curvy road stretched before us.

We had decided that we wanted to stay the night in 'some crazy little place' and there are a few of these in the Big Sur, but the keyword really is 'few'. It took us quite a while and quite a few miles, before we came upon a place that had room for us - the magnificent 'town' of Gorda Springs. Gorda Springs is so small, that it doesn't even show up on most maps and still it is truly majestic in its own little way.

The 'town' consists of a general store, that is also a gas station, that is also a restaurant, that also has little hill side cabins for rent. I was thrilled, the entire trip I had been waiting for us to stay in a place with a view of the pacific and our little Cabin in Gorda was as close as you can come to perfecting that dream. Gorda's other claim to fame is its Whale Watching. Given that the coast is so steep at this spot, the Ocean right in front of it is very deep, which makes Whales come there to frolic - in December to March, so no whales for us, but definitely a place worth coming back to for that purpose.

There's not much else going on in Gorda, this was one of the places, where my "Wireless Internet?", question was answered with "we don't even get TV or cell phone reception out here" - so no connectivity for us this day. Instead the Cabin hostess was kind enough to give us a Duralog for our outdoor fireplace, so we spent the evening watching the ocean and the stars, catching a few passing satellites...

Cruisin' [7/11 - CA]

2005-07-17T14:32:00.000-07:00

Time to leave Napa and head down to San Francisco. Perfect weather for top down driving and Dad has by now taken quite a liking to it. We approach the city and the Golden Gate bridge from the North sneaking peak-a-boo views of it along the way and we are very excited about it being such a clear and gorgeous day.

We don't have reservations for visiting Alcatraz (bummer!) but go down to Pier 39 & Fishermen's Wharf anyway. Turns out to be the most crowded place we've been to so far, tourists are just everywhere and we are amazed at what 'stuff' people are willing to buy and pay for.

We manage to have a good time regardless, enjoying the vintage ships in the San Francisco Maritime Park and the amazing views of Golden Gate & Alcatraz.

The day ends in Palo Alto where we stay in the cozy Cowper Inn - a 1893 Mansion - and spend time hanging out with my friend Marc Tobias. He tells us about Arnold Schwarzenegger's visit to the Yahoo campus that day and takes us to my favorite American diner (forgot its name...) where we enjoy huge and spicy hamburgers and delicious sundaes.

Wein, Weib & Gesang! [7/10 - Napa Valley]

2005-07-16T15:41:00.000-07:00

Where to start? Our first realization in Napa was that there are way too many wineries and way too little time - have a look at this wonderful map provided by the Napa Vintners and you'll get the idea: Map of Napa Valley - luckily we are used to tough challenges and so Julie crafted a battle plan that would take us to 5 of these fine establishments before boarding the Wine Train for a gourmet dinner @ 6.30 PM.

Here are the 5 wineries we made it to:
Sterling
Beringer
Rutherford Hill
Stag's Leap
Hess Collection

and here are the results from the JTWM jury:

Sterling: Gorgeous setting, the only winery featuring a ski resort style gondola taking visitors from the parking lot to their tour and tasting rooms. Their tour is great, very well laid out in beautiful and spacious modern, white, Mediterranean style buildings. Their wine, well, unfortunately, I can't say anything good about their wine really. Of the 4 kinds they served on the tour (2 whites & 2 reds) none were memorable or even decent - this winery was the tour highlight in terms of views and the low light in terms of wine. Our advice to Sterling: try spending more money on the wine and less on the presentation (read the on site Gondola).

Beringer: Good mainstream kind-a large winery. Not really all that impressive or outstanding in any way - decent wines and decent setting - but with a bit of a 'fast food' flavor to the experience given the many people they serve. If I remember correctly Julie quite enjoyed their Chardonnay - a wine that I mostly fail to enjoy, so can't comment on whether that was a good call or not :).

Rutherford Hill: The one with the Cave - something we were quite excited about. These guys dug their own large hole (ok: Cave) in the cliff wall to allow their wines to mature in perfect temperature and humidity. The latter being important, as it means the barrels will have to be topped off less often, hence letting less oxygen into the maturing wine, which is considered a good thing (hey - I did learn something!) Unfortunately this superior technique wasn't really noticeable in the wines we tried on site. They also get minus points for a having a tour that is a little on the long side (without tasting stops!), a bland tour guide and finally for allowing large numbers of non-wine drinkers on the tour (what's the point?!)

Stag's Leap: My personal tasting favorite. This winery is small and there is no fuss, aka intricate (read lengthy) tours and gift shops - it's just a short hope from the parking lot to the tasting room where you can get right at it. There are no non-wine drinking tourists at this place. We loved their red wines, which are very rich and full bodied and even their Chardonnay is decent (read non fruity).

I'll add a side note here: While touring Napa the Sebring shone more than ever - it was the perfect vehicle for 'hopping' from vineyard to vineyard in style, while enjoying the warm California breezes and the magnificent views on all sides and I think we got quite a few jealous looks on this day.

Hess Collection: Last stop on our day tour and Julie's favorite (think she liked the Lion in their logo...) - the "Collection" refers to the extraordinary artwork they feature on site - truly amazing and a nice touch. Wines were above average and their Syrah in particular a feast, so we decided to bring a case back as Julie's birthday present. Which led to what seemed to be hours of confusion for their poor sales person, to much amusement to us, until he overcharged us by $100 -- we got that settled and came out with a beautiful, logo embellished, wooden case (which I of course didn't take any pictures of - so you get to enjoy a shot of my talisman frog visiting their scrumptious pond instead).

6 hours of wine tasting in the sun & 100 deg. F. can be a challenge, so we were truly excited about boarding the wine train the evening, ready to kick back and enjoy the views and food without having to do much ourselves. It was a pretty ride, although we were a bit disappointed that other guests did not go to the same lengths as we did in terms of finding a wearing proper evening attire - but that's a story I'll leave to Tim to tell some other time...

Lucky Cows, Lucky Russians, Lucky Us... [7/9 - CA]

2005-07-16T14:42:00.001-07:00

Tough day: the first with a real goal/destination we had to reach before night fall: Napa Valley for the celebration of Julie's 28th birthday. We left Mendocino early and while the town was still covered in the early morning fog, aka Marine Layer that we have come to love, fear and be puzzled by every morning since hitting the California coast. For the reader who did not specialize in weather phenomenon in school, here is the short explanation of what Marine Layer is (quoted from a USA Today Q&A Site) "A marine layer is a cool, moist, sometimes fog-laden layer of air that is typically several hundred to as much as 2,000 feet thick. Chilly oceans, such as the Pacific off California, cool the air just above it, creating the marine layer. Warmer air above the layer acts like a lid, keeping it from mixing and dispersing. A steady west wind often piles the marine layer ashore, especially overnight, locking coastal communities in a cool, thick fog that lasts usually until midday when the sun is strong enough to break the inversion and mix out the layer."

While driving down the coast it didn't take long for us to realize that the cows living on California's north coast are some of the luckiest creatures in the world - just look at the view this one gets to enjoy (for free!) on a daily basis...

Seems like other people figured this out quicker than us - In Fort Ross the Russians settled in 1812 to hunt for Sea Otter furs which were the latest fashion hype back in St Petersburg - I'll dare to speculate that they simply liked it so much there, that they looked for an excuse to stay for as long as possible instead of making the ghastly trip back to Siberia. At least their books seem to support this theory, they never really did all that well financially. The Russians ended up eventually selling the Fort and all it's land to one Mr. Sutter in something like 1850, but not before having left their mark on the region. Only a few miles further south we arrive at the Russian River Valley - a beautiful river valley in Sonoma County renowned for its many wineries and the start of our journey in to wine country.

We follow the river to our final destination for the day Napa Valley, regretting for a bit having left the cool breezes of the coast to venture into the dry and dusty interior, at least until we reach our final destination and are greeted by Julie & Tim at the (in)famous Red Hen Cantina with some cooling compensation...

Redwoods & Victorian Bliss [7/8 - CA]

2005-07-15T19:00:00.000-07:00

Our day started out with a bright and sunny tour through Ferndale a tiny Victorian town close to Eureka in northern California. Unbeknownst to us before getting there Ferndale turned out to have been a bit of a hub for Danish immigrants - lets just say that we became suspicious when the neighbor town turned out to be named Copenhagen and when the largest building in town was the "Danish Hall" (a meeting place for a variety of Danish lodges, churches etc...)

We decided to explore the Danish heritage a bit, including a visit to the pioneer cemetery that was very telling - a fun surprise and as an added bonus we met a second generation Dane at Nielsen's hardware store with whom we exchanged a few polite ancient Danish phrases. [Note to the reader: there seems to be a pattern here, exactly the same thing happened to us in St. Croix where we met and toured the island with legendary Danish immigrant Fritz Lawaetz (RIP)].

The reason Ferndale is on the tourist map is the multitude of Victorian houses - most substantially bigger than the puppet version I had my picture taken next to. The town was so cute that it caused Dad to break in to a shopping frenzy (people back home beware: strange gifts may be coming your way... ) culminating in Dad buying a summer cowboy hat. I think that means that there are no anti- Grand Canyon excuses allowed anymore...

Next up were the beautiful Redwoods, which had us cruising down the Avenue of the Giants . I love the Redwoods, there's something very cool and fascinating about trees that are over 5000 years old and so amazingly tall. Dad started contemplating having a tree shipped out to Denmark, so that he'd never run out of fire wood for his beloved fireplace again - for the rest of his life....

We left the Redwoods heading back to the coast and finally making it out to the real Pacific Coast Highway 1 and slowly making our way down to Mendocino which is where we chose to spend the night, before heading to Napa to meet my sister Julie on 07/10.

Mendocino does get honorable mention as one of my favorite spots on this trip - we stayed at Abigail's B & B incidentally owned and operated by a Danish guy from the lovely island of Laeso and just loved it - how could we not, the place features a gourmet breakfast and a daily pre dinner winetasting... Mendocino itself is just too cute - situated right on the coast and again featuring plenty of beautiful Victorian houses, in this case mixed with plenty of hippy trippy flower gardens.