el Zeratulo

I got my iPhone

2007-10-19T15:56:47Z

As you can see, I just got my iPhone today. Software version is, due to Carrier-Reasons still at 1.0.2, and I plan to keep it that way for some time.
First impression is: Awesome. Absolutely awesome and amazing.
Although it lacks some of the features which I would take for granted in modern Mobile Phones, it shines on many other feature-comparisons.
I'll write more soon.

Hamburg Quickie 2007

2007-10-01T15:30:53Z

First of all I'd like to apologize for the sluggy pre-school english I'm using in this text. I seriously need to emphasize writing and expression in english again. It's off little use to read tons of english books and watch tons of english films, if the actual writing of english stuff recieves no training at all. So, with that said, I hope somebody will still read this
text about my recent Hamburg vacation :)

Roundabout 2 years after my last serious visit to Hamburg I finally found some time to start another vacation to this fabulous city. Mind you, of course living less then 3 hours from Hamburg it would actually be easy for me to go there just for a weekend, but tight schedule and a lack of interest in taking on this journey for less than 2 days of actual staying kept me from doing so. Now still being on my university summer break I thought this would be my best shot at another rather lenghty vacation before study and thus the tight schedule comes back haunting me.
So last weeks thursday I drove off to Hamburg with the main intent of visiting my cousin, who has since my last visited moved to a new location which i accordingly hadn't seen yet, and with the secondary intent of meeting many of my friends from the university who, just out of a rather lucky coincident, happened to be in Hamburg just the same weekend. The other important point on my agenda was to visit my good friend Raphael, who's been living in Hamburg for some months now, but that didn't work out as he was busy moving.
So after I arrived, I went and took a glance at my cousins new flat which is very nice, rather big and located right in the middle of the centre. Can't think of a better place to live, just that it's extremely difficult finding a place for your car. After we had a nice chat about everything which happened over the past weeks we drove off into town. We went to Saturn in order to look for new digital cameras (they had a Canon EOS 350D + 18mm-55mm for 399€, which is *really* cheap, however I decided against buying it, having just bought a new Camera in San Francisco) and from there went on to stroll through some clothing stores where I bought a new jacked. Later that evening, after way too much red vine, we went out. There's a very well-known Street in Hamburg which is called the "Kiez" (or Reeperbahn) and it's always the host to many parties (as well as being filled with legal and illegal prostitution, much like the red areas in Amsterdam). We went there, and had tons of fun in a small club called "China Lounge".
On Friday Christoph had to work, and I used the time to sleep, visit friends, and stroll through Hamburg on my own. We spend the evening watching DVD's (Lucky Slevin is a MUST-See for those who haven't) and went to bed early.
On Saturday we got up early, went for american breakfast at the Alster (a River / Lake in the middle of Hamburg) where we had the chance to see the new Airbus A380 that was just arriving at Hamburg Airport. After the breakfast we went to a rather big shopping mall with the serious intent of spending some money on clothes. Sadly I didn't find too much stuff, while my Cousin had more luck.
In the evening I went and met with my friends from the university. We drank a lot, had a (mostly) good time and continued to the Reeperbahn. On Sunday there was a American Car meeting in town which we attended with great pleasure. There were a lot of interesting vintage cars, like Dodge, Buick, Mustang as well as new ones like the Hummer, the Hummer H2 and others. I even spotted a DeLorean which I found plain ugly (I'd never seen one in reallife, just in the Back To The Future Movies).
All in All it was a relaxing, and very welcome vacation. I hope I'll be able to go on another Hamburg-Vacation within the next year, though I doubt it a bit thinking about my current track record of visiting Hamburg. Anyway, good times :)

floating free

2007-04-08T13:49:34Z

Purple haze lingering above me, glowworms of all shades and colors swirling around me. Impressions ransack my mind and negate contaminations of the past. Floating free I cannot surmise the direction I am heading for. Flickering uncertainity forms the chaos novel that surrounds me every fragment of a second.

"The tree's look different. He hasn't been to this part of the forrest before. Fresh air fills his lungs and makes him feel comfortable - even though he went astray days ago. He sets for the direction of the sun, as he seems to know that each path implies a similar level of insecurity. Pounding through wet moss, his feets feel as if they've been preparing since ages for the task ahead"

Light forms pictures and makes me wonder how I will feel after the next breath. My past unravels before me time after time again, with a rising confidence of having gone for the right decisions.

The impressions come and go. And every impression ignites my imagination, drop-dead gorgeous pictures appear. I question my reasons less and less.

One can't expect to disassemble the devastatements that have been building up for years, in weeks. One can't expect to immediately gain concrete feedback on large-scale actions. But while the purple haze flickers again, I feel a first herald of the implications of _the_ decisions.

It's 3am, I'm strolling through Münster and feel the lowering weight of my burden disappear for a second. I seem to float free. I seem to be free. A good path hopefully lies ahead - I'm heading for the sun.

Wish me luck.

Emission

2006-11-25T17:46:03Z

It's been a while. I admit it. Actually it's been the longest period of silence this, my little blog, had to endure so far. My life has been a macroscopic version of a roller coaster ride to hell and back ever since I wrote that last short article babbling about my beach party adventures. However, first the good news: Contrary to what Roger had already suspected, I'm not dead (yet), and second, I really managed to start studying now, just as I planned to do, and third, I had a very nice vacation to Mykonos (Greece) this summer. Examinig those three points again I can't but agree that those are the only good things which happened since that last blog-entry in June.
Not only the actual difference regarding the amount of good vs. bad news, but also the difficulty surrounding the explanation of the bad ones, just as well as their emotional background ( that which I'm not really willing to expose here ), lead to an awkward level of complexity, which naturally refuses to break down into smaller, simpler, (albeit still bad) pieces that could be explained to you, my dear friends. That means that I'm not really willing or able to explain everything that happened, and even those which I am to disclose won't be discussed to great lengths but merely "mentioned".
Apart from this, I still have a dim shimmer of hope leading to the tenuous assumption that I might be able to write a bit more in the future; And (which is even more important) that I'll start to read your blogs and livejournales again (because I not only dropped out of my life and my blog and whatnot, I also dropped out of the internet, keeping me from being updated about the current state of your lifes).
So, without further ado, here's my list of very-bad-things that happened during the past months (only those which I feal can be discussed here, there's a lot more :( ) (non-chronological order)

* I had a serious illnes which resulted in my ears not working anymore and was close to a 'stroke of paralysis' (I'm mostly better now, tho)

* Our dog, Corrie, died due to rat poison :(

* A rather big transition phase (which started about 1.5 months ago and will continue until January) keeps me from having almost any free time at all; I'm always busy, always on the run, and way too nervous. If I don't manage to calm down here, the above-mentioned Illness might very well come back

* I lost quite some money due to a stupid error

That's it; As mentioned above, I'm kinda on track, currently moving back into what some people would refer to as 'normality', that's why I have high expectations for 2007. There's a ton of other (lets call them 'neutral' news right now) things which I'd like to adress here, before I leave for study-preparations: I moved to Münster, a nice, quaint (god I love that word) town not too far from here; I got that MacBook Pro I sought after (DE); Meaning I switched from a 4-Computer workflow to a 1-Computer one. It feels so much better. I managed to go to some extraordinary good parties in between, met a lot of interesting people and generally feel well thinking about my social life (although I know that I desperately need to call some of my closer friends again because they, just like Roger, will suspect death otherwise - and I don't want them condolence cards to arrive right now ;) ) I've read a crazy ton of books this year (I kinda just realized that last week when I cleaned my shelf) All those books I read on the airplanes to Stuttgart as well as what I read while I had to stay in the hospital really adds up to some crazy number.

Ok, I hope that the above text was somehow understandable; My current lack of english communication (no icq, no blog, no aim, no phone calls, the friends from argentina went back home till next year) reveal via this blog entry that my english tongue has been degenerated down to a new level, but I hope that future blog posts (as well as an added emphasis on icq communication) will help me train it again, so that those future postings might be a tad more understandable and or readable.

I'm back - still choking - but alive; and the wet clothes are beginning to dry.
Thanks for reading, Benedikt

Into the finals / Beachparty 06

2006-05-28T14:13:58Z

After 6months of hard work, after 6 months of extremly busy schedules and a almost non-existant private life (read, no spare time either), after all this I had a week of vacation. This week really helped me, it was my first vacation in about 9 months and I spend most of my time refreshing, relaxing and regenerating.
Next week will be my (hopefully) last week in Stuttgart, another really busy time but afterwards the whole project should be done. I'll write about the project, the impacts and more at another time, and switch topic to this week's beach party now:

Our local club had a Beachparty going on this week, from Wednesday to Saturday. It was a really really good Party, lots of people, beautifull women, great overall atmosphere, and it felt so good celebrating after all these busy weeks. I needed this party so bad, and thus I really enjoyed it - although the next day was always followed by some serious headdaches, but hey, that's life :)

I uploaded some pictures:

just a small note [001]

2006-04-23T20:29:27Z

just like phoenix out of the ashes, mutilation led to a unexpected renaissance, something I've been dying to happen for over the past 2 years.
You don't know that I'm talking about you here, but thanks for being a reason.

today, 5 years ago, my father died.

2006-03-16T10:23:55Z

A year consists out of 365 days. If I were to say what I've been doing,
142 days ago, I couldn't say. Our memory doesn't save detailed
chronological data but mere events or experiences. But if I were to say
what I did on the 16th of March 2001, I could explain it in such a
great depth of detail that it would feel as close as yesterday.

On that day, suddenly and out of nowhere, my dad died due to a heart-attack.

I still can smell the fresh taste of the arriving spring in the air, I
still can see the medics standing in our house, I still can hear my
crying mom lying on the couch having been given drugs so she could
relax.

Abrupt incidents, especially if around the topic of death and disease,
hit extraordinary hard; there's no time to get used to the situation,
there's no time to say goodbye, there's no time to ask those questions
one can never ask again, there's no time to process the incidents.

And thus, there was no time.

When I reached home I was left with the dead body of my father; I
talked to him, I kissed him, I cried, I hoped he would all of a sudden
open his eyes again, coming back to life, I thought I'd feel his
presence. But in the end I was all alone, confused, broken and hopeless.

There are so many things I'd like to ask my dad now.

There are so many things I'd like to tell my dad now.

There are so many things I'd like to do with my dad now.

And yes, if I see other people of my age go to an event with their
dads, or getting help from their dads, or just talking about their
family, I can't but feel a bit envious.

The times after fathers death were quite tough, I fell into a box of
cold water and had to mature as fast as possible; suddenly being left
alone with my mom and my grandma, I needed to take care of all these
tasks which were previously fathers tasks. Those days were so tough and
busy that I had to lock my sadness inside, keep it calm until I would
find the free time I needed to process them.

But this free time never came. And during the first 4 years, I wasn't
able to process these inputs, I could never really sorrow after my dad.

Now, 5 years later, I miss my dad, I feel that there is so much I could
have gained from him. But this void in me needs to stay, reminiscenting
me of him. However, I can talk about it now. I can write on this blog
about it now. I can accept the situation now. Buddha said that 'Life is
Pain', and maybe he is right in that pain is a vital part of our
existence. I think I understood.

With the advent of the fifth year of his death, I also arrived at a
point in my life which calls for changes. In the coming months, the
life which I lived during the past 5 years, will change. Quite. I'm
looking forward to this. I am to close a chapter.

In germany it's common to write a special phrase onto a card which is
then being handed out to every visitor of the funeral. One usually
tries to find a phrase which is religious and/or fits the
situation/lost one very well.

We wrote the following lines onto my dad's funeral-card:

"No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die
away - until the clock he wound up winds down, until the wine he made
has finished it's ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested.
The span of someone's life, is only the core of their actual existence"

And thus, although my dad died, he continues to exist - through his lifework, through memories, and - through me.

supersede yourself to recompense a loss

2006-03-04T11:34:20Z

"The extreme parts of time extremely forms
All causes to the purpose of his speed,
And often at his very loose decides
That which long process could not arbitrate:
And though the mourning brow of progeny
Forbid the smiling courtesy of love (William Shakespeare)"

It has almost become a tradition for me to unveil emotional problems here, without talking about the problem itself. The anonymity of the internet allows to lament and to articulate in detail - without revealing those details.

Many natural processes contain so-called 'boundary' or 'extreme' values which define a point after which the influencing effect will grow into the opposite direction; Mathematicans know about this as broken rational functions. A magnet that rejects another magnet will embrace it if enough pressure is applied.

I'm similar. A recent talk with Raphael let me realize that I tend to not let someone near me in a casual relationship. I am a fragile person, someone who knows about this topic can find many hints which lead to the conclusion that I lack self-esteem. In order to not break the little I have, I hide myself behind a wall of arrogance, ludicrousity and let noone find the real me.

Now I let someone.
Let someone into the me, let her find me, told her things I told nobody, let myself in onto a adventurous road I'd not often seen before. I feld luck, I felt contentedness.
That's why it hurt so bad when everything failed.
I'm not to ask questions, I'm to readjust myself so I can find enough strength to overcome the next weeks at work, which will be very stressfull and exhausting.
I need to dump myself now. I need to find that which is me, release it again, free it from the remnants of love which poison it so bad, and then pull myself in again.

I fear this incidend only makes it even more difficult for me to open myself to new 'someone's again, even more fearing the cause and effect of a dysfunctional relationship. But maybe the dim light of friendship that left can help me endure this burden. And as I already wrote in a previous post: "But the memory of them sunny times will shine forever".

Who am I, Who are you

2006-02-24T20:10:45Z

As if it feared the dark clouds which were to appear, the grass shivered. Dusty wind, harbinger of what was to come, shook the grass, twirled, twisted, bend it. The silence, which is typical before a storm, had left, the remnants of the previous good weather had seemingly silenty disappeared. Several minutes ago warm wind, butterflies and an overwhelming amount of peacefullness had dominated this place. Friendship had been all over, happy flowers had been dancing to that secret rythm which seemed to influence the bee's and birds too.

Luck is a rare good, it's presence is the start of it's disappearance. As soon as you get ahold of it, you loose it - just because you got it in the first place. So one has to inhale every second, enjoy every minute, record every timeframe. Real luck is a rare good, it's what we admire the most - and nobody can keep it longer than for a short amount of time.

And just as the happiness, warmth and friendship had left, happiness had vanished too. Gone to a secret place, waiting to, or not to, reappear.

Like heavy tears, falling down from a crying heaven, the black clouds had turned the once happy scene into debris. The thick water made the plants feel their added weight; with a sad look they seem to crumble under the additional burden. The bee's - those who could survive - had hidden. Thunderbolts had changed the overall view of the scene, had given a well-known place a new face, unveiled previously unknown details.

The happy feeling will come back again. Sooner or later. Luck will come back too. Sooner or later. Whether it might happen here remains to be seen. Whether this place will find back to it's old beauty remains to be seen. The future is known for always taking the course which we expect the least.
Thunder and rain can be a good starting ground for a plethora of new plants, animals, insects, feelings.

I for one hope for the best, well-knowing that hope is not to be trusted, it's mankind's greatest treasure - until it has to face the face of reality.
But the memory of them sunny times will shine forever.

Blinkenlights

2006-02-17T11:46:20Z

I'm sorry for not writing in here anymore. But a dificile combination consisting largely out of work-based stress and therefore the need for recreation in the little spare time I have.
I feel that I'm shortly before entering a burn-out state again, so I need to be carefull. And currently it feels very good to not use a computer in my spare time. So I'd call this Blog sort of temporalily closed. - Until further notice. If you see me on ICQ or AIM feel free to contact me, I might or might not answer.
Love you all. Thanks for reading.

New Years Resolutions

2005-12-31T14:58:28Z

The year is almost over again. Only several hours are left before 2006 comes to replace the already ill-fated 2005.

A newyear always comes with new hopes, ideas, goals.

When the last year started, I had hopes and ideas which worked out
totally different than I expected. Usually New Years Resolutions are
part of the goals which one makes for the next year, and just as I had
no goals, I had no resolutions either. Looking back I have to say tht
it wasn't a bad year at all. Everyone has his up's and down's and so I
had times when I was in deep despair just as I had times when I felt so
lucky that I could have cried.

Understanding this I still think that it might be usefull to make some
real New Years Resolutions, on the one hand to have something to look
back to at the end of the coming year, and on the other to have some
sort of plan, or collection of goals. Something to refer to if I'm not
sure which direction to go. And as I'm already in the busy again (I
need to leave for a new years party in <60min) I'll start with my
resolutions now.

* I'll stop smoking. This one is important. I've actually never been a
real smoker.. I'm more someone who smokes from time to time when at a
party. But I need to adress this issue now before it starts getting
worse. This will be a tough one as I only smoke when I'm drunk, and
when I'm drunk I hardly have the will to refuse a cigarette, but I'll
try my best.

* I've to lose weight. Adiposity has been in a strong battle with me
over the years. And won. My current job leaves little to no time for
sport, and the fact that I'm almost living in a hotel isn't good for
nutrition either. So I have to force me to eat good healthy food
everytime I can, and do sports everytime schedule allows it. Only a
combined attack with strong will can help me here.

* Spanish. Yes again, I'm still eager to enhance my basic spanish
skillset onto a conversation-friendly level which would allow me to
talk with my argentinian friends without frequently having to dig
through tons of gestures. I bought spanish books recently and reading
them is not that bad, I need to learn some many words, but at least I
can work around the language for now. For the next year I'll hope to be
able to greatly enhance my vocabulary so I finally can start writing
blog posts in spanish which make sense in the one or other way.

* Dutch. Everything in life has a dual nature, and since I need to
learn dutch due to some requirements I enforced upon myself, I thought
I might very well try to do it next to learning spanish. My brain
should be in the right mode when I'm busy learning spanish, so learning
dutch in addition to it can only make it easier.

* Set goals. This one is important. I, as described above, lack goals.
I have plans, ideas and whatnot, but no goals. I've read some
interersting books regarding this topic now (for example David Allen's
'Getting Things Done') but I didn't adapt that knowledge yet.

With the events and results of what I currently plan for 2006, a first real set of goals should be possible.

* Blog more. Yeah just that.

Ok, that's it. These are my new years resolutions. If you see me not adhering to them, feel free to allude me.

Thanks for reading.

Have a Happy New Years.

Best wishes for 2006

Benedikt Terhechte

New Mac OS X App: Safarilicious

2005-12-11T12:06:56Z

I created a new Mac OS X Application, dubbed 'Safarilicious'. It
exports your Safari Browser bookmarks to your del.icio.us account.

More details on the Stylemac Safrilicious page.

Another new project: virenfrei-surfen

2005-12-11T11:59:27Z

I thought I'd join the google adsense $1 bandwagon too, and created a
small page which stands to help in the war of Firefox versus Internet
Explorer.

So, next time you try to explain a friend of yours (or a family member)
why Firefox is better, you could just as well link him up to the
virenfrei-surfen page, and hope that it'll convince him to switch.

Here's the page:

www.virenfrei-surfen.de

Metamac article

2005-12-11T11:55:26Z

I wanted to write about this earlier, but .. well you know limited time and stuff, useless to write about it again.

I was kindly asked from Metamac.de to write an article about "Tagging under Mac OS X" - and so I did. So in the current issue of the Metamac magazine
(the new one will come out tomorrow, so I'm a bit late with this
newspost), there's an article by me describing the various ways of
applying tags and using them (and the benefits of this for your
workflow) under Mac OS X. I might release this article on this
blog (or Stylemac.com) somepoint in the future.

Human update

2005-12-06T19:28:23Z

I'm sorry for the lack of passion I invested into this blog lately. But
several new projects, commitments to other things, business at work as
well as an added emphasis on party and friends.

I have quite a lot of news which I want to share, on the one hand so
other people know about it (some people tend to call it 'pimpin) and on
the other hand so I can remember this (via this blog) someday in the
future. I'll cut all the news in different posts.

My writing could sound (read?) funny because I'm currently sitting in a
hotel in Stuttgart and I'm already a tad drunk, but more on that
later on.

The Worlds Biggest Linklist - A Guinness Record Tryout

2005-11-29T14:38:06Z

Back when I was young, I loved the Guinness Book of Records. Not only
was it interesting to read what kind of records people had been working
on, there was a lot of fact information too. Longest bridge, heaviest
plane, highest skyscraper and so on. My friends and me, we spend
countless hours digging through it, hoping to find the funniest or
coolest record (like this guy with the longest fingernails).

Now you can be part of a record too!

Dublay of Module23.com tries to reach for a Guinness Book of Records entry by creating the longest link-list ever.
Not only a funny idea, but also a good way to advertise your page, the
higher in the list you are, the more people will see your page if this
idea catches on (read: if it'll be posted at digg)<br/>

Great idea.

The Worlds Biggest Linklist - A Guinness Record Tryout

StyleMac.com - My new Project

2005-11-14T21:07:17Z

Tadaaaaaa!

After several days of hard work (and some weeks of planning in the initial phase) I'm proud to present my newest project:

www.stylemac.com - Fresh Apple Design & Tech News

Stylemac features Apple and Design related and even Windows users might
find the one or other interesting tidbit as design news are mostly
cross-plattform anyway.

There are some interface glitches left, which I want to correct as soon
as possible, though that means after I'm back from Stuttgart, as I've
to fly to Stuttgart again tomorrow.

I just moved the <a
href="http://www.stylemac.com/tagbag">TagBag!</a> Widget over
to the new page, as it makes more sense for it to stay over there.

I hope you'll enjoy the page nevertheless, I'll try to settle at
something between 5-10 news posts a day, and would love to count you
among my readers ;) or at least write some comments quoting your
opinion about the page.

I'll of course continue to post here at terhech.de as this is my
personal blog (it's just that I have little personal to say from time
to time)

New Sarbatka Track.. Dialima Tu Kafe

2005-11-01T16:55:45Z

This is my first videogame remix after 3 years ob absence from video
game remixing (for the uninformed readers: yeah there is such a thing
as a videogame music remix community), and I'm really happy with the
outcome. I might even continue this path and do some more videogame
remixes again in the future. Now a blurb of text about this track:

This is my submission to JoeCams excellent Earthbound remix project "Bound Together". There are 32 submissions from some of the best remixers out there, the whole thing rocks darn hard. You should really go and download the others too.

This remix builds upon the Coffee Break theme and thus concentrates on something which is a vital part of my life. Coffee.

Most of this track was made during my 14 day vacation on the greek
island Mykonos. The relaxing atmosphere of sunny beaches caught on to
this track, too - I think. The title means 'Coffee Break' in greek. I
hope you'll enjoy it. The guitar parts were played by the famous Frank van't Ende (Diggi Dis).

You can download the track here

I'd be happy about some comments, criticism and stuff.

Anita\'s Birthday

2005-10-26T19:52:28Z

On Friday Raphael and me we went to Anita's birthday in Enschede (NL).
We had funny times over there; nice conversations and laughed a lot. I
took some pictures with my new K750i Mobilephone (which sports a 2mpx
camera). Pictures follow..

How Much is My Blog Worth

2005-10-25T08:16:10Z

Sorry for not posting anything in here right now, but while I have on
the one hand not enough time to really concentrate on this blog I have
on the other hand little to write, too. There're some rants I'd like to
publish here but I lack the passion to refine their content right now. However, here's something funny I found today on Business-opportunities:

My blog is worth $6,774.48.
How much is your blog worth?

so..

Anyone wanna buy this blog? $7.000 and it's yours :D

Interesting Findings 001:

2005-10-11T06:25:23Z

Funny religional artifacts:

"Despite their reputation as fierce warriors, Maasai culture revolves around their cattle. One of their spiritual beliefs is that their rain god Ngai gave all cattle to the Maasai people, and therefore anyone else who possesses cattle must have stolen them from the Maasai."

Why does it sound so utterly familiar? :D

My Blender Rendering Tests

2005-10-05T18:53:32Z

Blender is a neat OpenSource (read: free) 3D modelling and rendering
tool which has gotten a lot of interesting features as of late. The
absence of a 3DSMax Version for Mac OS X led me to discover this
software which I had already tried and dismissed years ago (Version
1.66 I think) again. Much time has passed since; Blender got
Open-Sourced and a really strong army of developers helped add new and
exciting features to it. Now, this is of course in no way a clear
winner or even a real contender to giants like 3DSMax or the (just
swallowed) Maya. But that's not really necessary for the little 3D-Work
I need to do from time to time - I ain't driving a Ferrari either
although I need a car from time to time. I'm really happy with
what I can achieve with Blender, and the actuall modelling process
(which is way different to the 3dsmax way) is quite fast too, after one
got used to it.

So: Over the past days I've been experimenting with it from time to
time, and here are my first results; they're not in any way special but
I'm still quite proud that I got this far :)

Modelled with Blender, rendered with the built-in Yafray.

Clicking on the images reveals a big version.

I hope that I'll be able to show something more interesting soon.

Conversation Transformation

2005-10-04T08:15:30Z

Sometimes normal conversations can reveal worldbreaking facts for
people, can shatter their whole horizon and make the world, if only for
a sudden moment, look a tad awkward.

I just experienced such a conversation yesterday. The conversation
itself could have been perfectly normal until it took a weird
transformation which I, first, misinterpreted as a logic failure in
dialog partners sentence, but let me just cite the interesting parts:

A really good friend of ours is currently living in our house again,
only for a month before she leaves for argentina.. So yesterday we were
sitting in our garden and she was reading a magazine. Then, after
reading a bit she said 'ah, that Paris Hilton is marrying this Paris
Latsis" and I said "yeah" (of course in a lower tone being reminded of
this sad event again ;) ). "Now, his name is actually Paris Kristofer
Latsis" she said and then added "which is only because of my brother".
"Wait" I said, you mean your brothers name is Kristofer because this
Paris name is "Paris Kristofer", thinking that she had a small logical
problem here. "No no" she said, "His mom liked my brother so much and
when she got her son, this paris here, she named him after my brother".
This event then turned my world around. "You mean... you know this guy
like.. personally?" (Keep in mind, this guy who currently fucks paris
hilton) "Yeah, they were living next to our house in athens, and oh.. I
still remember when his dad took him for ski-school once a week"
and then, as if she was talking about nothing special at all continued
with "ah yeah now does anyone here want to drink another cup of tea?".
Yeah tea. sure. In that moment I'd have prefered a big cup of
pangalactic gargle blaster, suddently - if only for a moment - this
whole celebrity world came like a train, hit me, and dispappeared
again. Weird thing. I wanted to ask her if she could arrange and
invitation to their marriage for me, but I just read that the two of
them are no couple anymore. Well, so at least that's back to good again
:)

The Greece / Mykonos Mega Vacation

2005-09-30T18:57:24Z

There she comes: now, two weeks after the vacation, I finally found
some time to write about it and thus perpetuate it in here not only for
others to read, but also for me to have a callback onto all those
memories which - a common problem with memories - fade way too fast.

The good thing about a delay between end-of-vacation and start-of-story
is, as I figured today, that the memories of downright boring things
are long lost and thus you'll only find tidbits of the more remarkable
experiences in here.

(Sorry for all syntax errors, typos and whatnot, but I'm way too lazy to care for that right now :) )

(all pictures are clickable to reveal a big version, and here's the full set of pictures (22))

Mykonos:

Mykonos is a small-scale greek island in the aegan sea, which has a
stiff reputation as being everything but cheap and attracts a lot of
tourists from all over the world each year (we met people from New
York, New Zealand, Australia, Jordania, Spain, Italy, Libanon, London,
Portugal...). Being surrounded by several other sometimes bigger or
smaller islands it's not instantly clear as to why this is. Some people
claim it's the vicinity to the island of Delos which offers a wide
introspection into greek life 2000 years ago as people found old greek
temples and towns in 1900 (Delos is actually said to be the biggest
archaeological place next do Delphi). Other people claim it's the
direct link with the gay community, which brings me to the main topic:
Mykonos is gay, literally ;) Dozens of people were but tired to tell me
in the first place about how Mykonos is the most appealing
holiday-target for gays from all over the world. Little did I know that
my shallow laughter back then would bite back bitterly. I've never seen
so many gay people on one place - mind you, I don't bear a grudge
against gay people or feel offended in any way by their behavior, it's
just the explanation of the process of understanding these new
experiences from my point of view :) But I'll come back to that later
on.

Mykonos has a set of astonishingly beautiful beaches, one of them beat
everything I had seen so far (pity I forgot the name). I think that
Mykonos has about 7-8 towns, I'm not really sure here. Chora (or Hora),
found in the western part of the island, is the biggest and - in most
cases - most interesting town on the island. Outfitted with clubs &
discos (you'll find one in every oh-so-little corner), coated with
expensive fashion shops like Lacoste or Armani, build around a quaint
port and spiked with restaurants and culinary extravaganzas of all
sorts.

The town is resembles in some ways the structure of a giant maze and I
heard that this was so that pirates would get lost when trying to steal
something hundreds of years ago. We still had problems finding the one
or other place after our 2-week vacation, and I don't even want to
think about where really drunk people might end up if they're new in
town.

The Maze from above. It's about one mile x one mile.

That's how the maze looks if you walk through it

This is the quaint port. There're better pics but this one is from me :)

This is the so-called "little
venice" a beautifull promenada which is build so that one ca nip on
expensive coffee while watching the sun going down into the sea.

Our little house lay about 10 minutes by car from hora and the price
for a cab from our place to hora was 7 eur, so being two persons it was
quite cheap for us to go to town whenever we felt that way.

The house was part of a small vacation-park containing 75 houses, a
taverna, a private beach and a pool and since we were quite late (the
boom time is from july to august) we were almost alone in the whole
park - thus being in the great position of having something which was
quite close to a private beach as well as a private pool; which is why
I'll always refer to "our" pool and "our" beach from now on :)

I went with my Cousin - Christoph - and my Mom. One of mom's friends
was there too, so we were 4 people in the house and there were always
neighbors visiting us or taking us onto some sort of adventure.

Our Pool

That's what breakfast looked like

Our house

Now on to describing those experiences which are still remnant in my brain before I loose their details too;

The Pelicans:

There're about 4 pelicans in Hora, they just live on the street, let
visitors take pictures, or try to find a good protion of tasty fish. I
had never seen a pelican before (or never in that close) and at night
when I was walkin the streets drunk, it always amazed me when they
crossed my paths or were sleeping next to a club.

Me against the Pelican :)

Delos:

Melkon, a really nice guy from the Libanon, came with us (or took us
with him) to Delos, the Delphi-Like Archaeological Place on an island
next to Mykonos. Delos had been the host of the followers of the god
Apollo, so there was a lot of Apollo-related debris around: temples,
statues and whatnot. I'm not that much into history but it was
nevertheless really interesting. Even more interesting - even
mindboggling - was the mountain in the middle of the island. It took
about 30 minutes to climb up to the hill but one had a astonishingly
wide and spectacular view from above: One could see all the surrounding
islands, the sea, little boats, the temples and other people as they
tried to climb up to the top, we enjoyed it.

The spectacular view from Délos mountain

The Greek Wedding:

On one evening we went with some friends to a hidden restaurant which
was the center of a gorgeous lagoon, with small ships, some yachts, and
little palm trees at both sides. What we didn't know beforehand, but
greatly excited us, was that there was a greek wedding taking place
just on that day, and so we could almost participate in the whole
wedding-celebration (albeit we didn't know anyone there). This was a
really special evening, we had tasty food, really good wine, and the
added plus of experiencing all these things which were part of that
wedding. It was great, in the end we even went and mixed with the real
participants, met some of them, had some chats, and thus learned more
about the bridal pair (It was in fact a international greek wedding.
Some speeches were held in english and the bride was half greek half
indian while the bride groom spoke so perfect english that he had
probably spent a large time around the world, there were attendants
from uk, jamaica, portugal, netherlands, switzerland, france, and
whatnot). I guess it's difficult to describe but this evening, too,
will never ever leave my heart.

Look how much fun we had!

Remezzo:

There's a special club right at the Hora port called 'Remezzo'
(formerly Mercedes). This one not only has a magnificent and gorgeous
view but also an unbelievable high reputation. It's l33t only (that's
what we were told that is). There's no chance to get in there until
you're someway important, and if you're in you have to be rich as for
example a beer is 10 eur and a bottle of whisky 140 Eur. I don't want
to go into details on how it happened, but we got in there (two times
that is), and had another one of those never-forget nights (Another
two, literally). Most people have probably been to a VIP party once in
their life (through contacts, friends or whatnot) so this is no
different, if you ever happened to have experiences something the like,
you'll probably know this kinda weird feeling. It's like feeling
to be in the wrong place - in a good way. We really enjoyed it, (and
they had really really pervert drawings on all of their walls, which
puzzled me a bit).

Our Beach:

As I already told you, we had a little almost-not-used beach right next
to our house, and used it like mad (of course). On our 3. day (or so)
we found Snorkeling Tools in the house and from then on spend most of
our time diving in the lagoon, finding shells, or following
fish-swarms. I've never been diving before and I've to stress that it's
a really interesting feeling. It's a different world, and the overall
silence managed to let me relax at an astonishing pace. Apart from that
we of course spend a lot of our time on the beach, in the sand, trying
to extend our tan as much as possible.

The Gay Party:

Now this is an interesting story, and I bet the title alone makes you
shuffle uncomfortable in your seat, let alone ask the question "Did he
switch sides now". No folks, c'mon, read on for the full story:

On one day when we were out in town we met two girls from london (Kathy
& her friend whose name I forgot, silly me) who - after labeling us
as gay at first - declared they knew a really good club and wanted to
head there now and asked if we wanted to join them - after we declared
our total straight-ness. We wanted to join for sure, and so we followed
them, eager to fetch as much party as possible (it was already 5am and
most clubs were closed by now). On our way to the club the girls
informed us that it might very well be that we were the only straight
guys in the whole club as it was *THE* gay after hour club. This, of
course (we were drunk), did in no way affect us and so we proceeded.

This was the first time in my life that I went to a gay party, it was
really funny, all these gay people were extremely kind (of course they
were kind, they were after my ass!), and definitely understood how to
celebrate a good party. Although I was quite reluctant to stay there
for a too long time (having a gay touch your belly, ass or penis every
once in a while makes you feel different) we still managed to have a
ton of fun, danced, had Kathy take cool pictures, drank drinks
and chat and laughed about all kinds of things. I may not have been in
the best mood but I think that I was a tad tired too, so if you're
reading this Kathy, thanks again for taking us with you as well as
sending the pictures and sorry for me wanting to leave early. Now, I
learned two really important things on that evening (as in important
for my life):

1. I know fully understand how women feel if a horny guy is chasing them like mad.

2. If I ever go to a gay party again I'll NOT wear a pink shirt.

I even tried to look gay

Gay party pic.

The last day:

On our last day we had planned to go to a full-moon party in a club
somewhere in the middle of the island. We had heard good stuff about
these parties, that they were for example resembling some of the really
good Ibiza parties. But since we had met a girl from spain at lunch
with whom we wanted to drink a bit at 8 we decided that we'd first go
and meet her, have some drinks with her and hen maybe continue to the
full-moon party. The girl, Virginia (and another girl, her colleague
from work whose name I can't remember anymore) spoke fluent german and
fluent english, so we had little to no problems communicating with her.
Instead of going out to the full-moon party we then chatted for almost
the whole evening (and, of course, had quite some alcoholic drinks),
and had a really broad and interesting range of different topics, which
now leads me to the whole point of this post: At about three in the
morning we were drunk on a well in the middle of Hora enjoying the view
of the port at night and talking about the before-mentioned everything
when Virginia suddenly started to talk about how she had read
Nietzsche's "Also sprach Zarathustra" (a really really difficult to
understand german philosophy book which lay ground for a lot of new
philosophical approaches for example through it's claim that 'God is
dead') in germany and what she thought were the main aspects of it.
I've read the book myself and thus we could talk about it and analyze
some parts of it ( as in talk a lot of rubbish because your drunk). My
point here is that I'll never ever forget this awesome situation:
Sitting in the middle of greece at 3am drunk on a well, talking in
german with a girl from spain about the deeper implications of one of
the most difficult german Philosophy books in existence. And she had
fuckin understood the point of the book, something I wouldn't even
think about having it achieved myself. If you're reading this,
Virginia, I'm bowin down, that was awesome :) but I think I've already
said that.

Conclusion:

It was a really really great holiday, and it was the first time that my
mom flew (like in a plane), and we'll definitely try to go there again
next year. And then we'll know more about the island, which is a
doubleplusgood.

Thanks for reading, I'd love to see some comments :)

Minutes before leaving

Silence

2005-09-04T12:17:48Z

Ay, I'm sorry that I've been kinda neglectin this blog recently
but I've been busy (as always) and then again it's all about the
priorities anyway :)

Ok, I'll leave for a 2week Greece-Holiday tomorrow. I hope that I'll
have a great time, I'm visiting the beautifull Island of Mykonos :)

In other news, I've had a great time yesterday with Ambro in Index, it
was a rockin evening and I could write a lot about it now, but (as I
saw this morning) Ambro already wrote a delicious description.

His overview is so close to my thoughts that you could very well just
switch his and my name in the text, and it'd still make sense to me :)

Ok, I'm officialy off. See ya in 2 weeks.