Again: A beautiful day

Brief overview of this really nice and sunny day:

Awekened by the wonderful warm sunlight on my skin at about 9 a.m. Got up with a smile on my face at about 10 a.m.

Went to the ocean (between Bondi and Tamarama), enjoyed the sun, the ocean and had a littlie breakkie.

Then, when it became a little more crowded I moved to the Royal Botanic Gardens and to Mrs. Macquaries Point where I had a nice time in the sun reading a book and listening to some music and simply relaxing.

That's the way a day should be :)

Uhm...well...have a look =)

http://www.myheritage.com

28/06/2007 - a day to remember!

WE ARE WORLD HERITAGE!
Finally the opera gets what it deserves!

Oooooopera!

Another cultural highlight just took place this week! I went to the opera. Two times in a row! Yeah. Time to be impressed! ;)

On Tuesday night Christina and I went, pretty nice dressed of course, to the Drama Theatre at the Opera to see Othello. One of Shakespeare's best known tragedies was a pretty impressive performance and really great to see those excellent actors on stage.

But, I have to admit that it was not that impressive going into the Theatre as one might think. The Drama Theatre, where those kind of plays are being performed, is located at the ground level of the opera and does not fit that many people. Even the stage was not really big and so the room basically looked like a theatre room in any other theatre of the world, I'd say. But, the feeling was way cooler, the understanding of the words much harder (than in Germany) ;-) and the actors were really good! So after all a perfect night out.


On my second night to the opera everything was way different. I did not wear a suit, we did not see a tragedy but the most funny performance I have ever seen live on stage. We saw Wil Anderson performing his new live program 'Wil of God' at the Playhouse at the Opera. And man, that guy rocks!



It was really more than one hour of continually laughing and fun. Seeing this guy having fun on the stage and interacting a little with the folks in the audience. My cheeks really hurt when leaving the opera at about half past 9 and the smile in our faces lastet the whole night. So thanks for this incredible funny night to Wil and Triple M who gave me the two tickets for being German (well, almost - but that's another story ;-) ).

Cheers and regards to Ando - the Comedy Commando (you won't understand it, but it's funny, believe me =).

Animal Farm

Soho. Saturday night, almost at sleep. But before a brief overview over the past 48 hours ;-)

Friday started pretty cool. Meaning the day started pretty sunny, as usual in the morning I was walking towards the ocean when going to the busstop and afterwards I had a short walk through the park before going to work. Work itself passed pretty quickly since my new project is pretty much ok and everything's going fine atm.

After work I then met with Christina and we had some dinner. And again it was Foodcourt time. Market City. Yeeeeehaaa ;-) But this time it wasn't Thai Thai Thai but Indian cousine. Veeerrrryyy good too :)

When we finished dinner at Chinatown we headed back to George St. and then entered the next Gloria Jeans for the best hot chocolate in town (yeah, even if they're owend by the Hillsong Church, they still make damn good hot chocolate). So we sat there, outside!!! and enjoyed the sweet taste and the warm feeling this nice drink delivered :) But, since such a chocolate usually doesn't last long we, once more, headed back to George St and wanted to look for a nice bar where we can have a drink and met some of Christina's friends. So I suggested to have a look at the 3 wise monkeys. I know I know, it's pretty much of a tourist attraction, but even though it's still a cool place :) So we headed to the 3 monkeys and, for the first time in Sydney, I didn't had to show my ID ;-)
Being there we then had a pretty nice evening and I came up to met her friends. The funny thing, two of them, who are living here for about one year now, are together. So when they arrived I started talking to them and then, of course, the question came up 'where are you from?'. And when I said Würzburg, they both went like 'oooooh noooooo really??!!! - we both are from Würzburg too...' Maaaaaan. The world's to small ;-) So they told me that Kerstin is from Würzburg and Basti studied there...unbelievable ;-) The other two guys I met then this evening haven't been from Würzburg - fortunatly =) But was quite interesting talking to so much doctors at one time ;-)

Then, when I came home at night I just wanted to check my mails and realized that our landlord put the router downstairs in the flat of the others. As a result of this the connection up here was terribly bad and I wasn't able to check mails....after complaining about it today he wrote me a sms saying it's working now...well...the connection is still very bad but at least I can check mails. He wrote: 'The router is now positioned perfecttly...' and that from a guy who isn't able, without joking, to go online without any help....nice!

But anyway. This morning I got up at about 9 am, had a shower and then went to the city. Just visited the Opera, had some sandwiches for breakkie down there and then met with Daniel, Reese and Christina again for our zoo adventure.

It started with entering the Taronga Zoo Ferry. And, luckily we got some nice places on it so that we could see the opera, circular quay and the skyline in a perfect way while leaving the harbour.

After arriving at the Mosman Zoo platform we bought our Tickets and went straight to the entrence - by cable car! That was pretty cool 'cause one was able to some cool animals right beyond oneself. Niiiiceeee (insider ;-) ). Then we slowly made our way through the Zoo which is really pretty cool designed. It has not that many animals as a Loro Parque or Parque de Aquilás (look at my pix ;-) ) for example, but it's done in a pretty nice way. And, the cool thing, we finally saw some Kangaroos. Live. Eye to eye. Woohooo ;-) Of course there will be hundreds of pics to come...so stay tuned ;-)

We really spent about 5 hours in this cool place and finally, before leaving enjoyed a marvellous view down from Taronga Zoo over the harbour bay at the opera, the bridge and the skyline. Awwweeeeeeessooooooomeeee :)

When finishing the zoo-thing we wen't back to circular quay and then headed to newtown for dinner. We went into a nice chinese byo. Looked cheap, was cheap ;-) but the food was ok. So well done :)

Afterwards we went for a drink to the Bond Hotel. Again a pretty nice location and after the managed to get the heater on it was even cool at the outside. But since we all (some of us more than the others ;-)) have been pretty tired we didn't stay that long and went back to the cbd where our ways finally split ;-)

so, till now, it was quite a nice weekend. Tomorrow there'll be some volleyball at our usual venue and some discussions with my flatmates...lets see what the day brings ;-)

but so long, have a nice one! :)

oh..before i forget: today i received a letter from the australian super. After entering this 'club' ;-) at the beginning of march i finally got my super-card and a letter from my uni (nothing important - actually kind of commercial thing) great! thx guys! ;-)

We've got the power...

...back, finally! After beeing in the dark vor one night and one morning yesterday evening the power came back and we were able to live our life in a normal way (light, fridge, freezer, internet ;-)) again. Wednesday evening, all of a sudden, the power was gone. But it only effected our house. So I grabbed my mobile which lighted me the way through the shallow paths down to the fuse box. And maaaaaaan, those fuses looked like...uhm well...they looked very australian. No worries mate and so on...terrible ;-) But anyways...after gaining the courage to touch those dangerous looking fuses nothing happened and after 5 minutes of trying everything I started to head back to my room where my laptop was spending some light. Walking towards light one could say ;-)
Then, when getting up in the moring, of course, nothing had changed. So without electricity it was even colder than it already is every morning. During my workday and the return home I already thought about what to do if the power is still not working - but oh wonder, looks like our landlord was there during the day and fixed the problem. Everything is working fine again and I am connected to the civilization again :)

But we still don't know what happened at this night. Whether it was the green, black or whatever power we use...or anything else. But, no worries...until the next breakdown ;-)

The Power of Compassion

Saturday, June 16, a day like no other.

Well, the first unusual thing this morning was that I got up at about 8 a.m. - on a Saturday ;-)

But then, after getting up early I made my way to The Domain. While getting closer to my destination more and more people joined me and when I finally arrived there were already hundreds of people - more than 30 minutes before the actual event took place.

And then, after Brett Kirk made a short anouncement, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama entered the stage.
And, believe it or not, it was really the way all people who have seen him before keep telling. As soon as you see him, you start smiling, feeling better....pretty strange in some way. But he is such a friendly, warm and funny person. Really unbelievable that he is indeed the spiritual leader of Tibet and the Buddhists.

At the beginning of his speach, he received a Sydney Swans jersey as a kind of present (Brett Kirk is a player for the Swans) and thank you for coming to Sydney. And during the complete 90 minutes he carried it over his shoulder...looked pretty cool ;-)

When starting talking about Compassion and everything that is related to this topic, he always drifted a little away since he always could remember some experiences which have been related to the comparison he was talking about. But he never lost the focus on the topic and always made his points of view very clear and very easy to understand. And he always kept telling that, in order to achieve some changes in the world, everyone hast to start with himself (well, nothing new, but he just told it in a simple and easy way to understand). I think my blog is not the right place to discuss everything he said today - everyone should read, listen or watch him if possible to make up his own mind.

But the cool thing for me was, while he was talking about how one should handle things in life (in his oppinion of course) I was thinking 'hey...that's the way I do it' - sounds kind of arrogant, I know, but was pretty cool to listen. Since a lot of people kept telling me that they don't understand why I am happy or at least smiling most of the time...and he said, even if something bad happens...you can be sad for a moment or two. But then you should be happy again. Or at least not that sad anymore. Firstly because there are too many good things happening to one (or there were to many good things happening with other people one knew) and secondly, compared to others who really suffer from great pain, the tragedy one has to cope with by oneself isn't that tragic anymore...and everyone should get up in the morning and expect something good to happen. Simply looking forward to every day one gets up...and yeah, he's damn right! :)

Actually, right now, I'm too much excited when thinking about this morning - so I won't write anymore right now - maybe I'll continue during the next days. But right now I'm just happy that I've been there today :)

Update :)

marooned

All right now. I think 2 days after, I am able to say it without starting to cry out in tears...Wednesday night we (NSW) got marooned. The Maroons defeated the Blues in a dramatical 2nd State of Origin match at Telstra Stadium with 10:6. So QLD leads the best of 2 series 2:0 and the third and last match isn't that important anymore.

A bad day for NSW sports history since it's the first QLD win at Sydney for decades.
But, no worries...we'll be back next year. They might have won the battle, but the war isn't over (I guess it will never bee...;0).

And now, back to more important things (and stop pretending being a footy fan ;)).

Rocky(n) II

A wonderfull day, painted sky, sunshine and the next day of the Darling Harbour Jazz festival...great combination...but before I went there I had to welcome my two new flatmates at home. 2 American girls...now there are 3 of them here. What have I done to deserve this? ;-)

Well...after our landlord entered their room through the window (because the girl that just moved out this morning left the key in the room and locked it from the inside, so it wasn' possible to open the door from the outside - funny - for me ;))I had a quick chat with them and then headed for the beach in order to enjoy the sun and the temperature...and when the evening came closer I headed to Darling Harbour to see some 'Jazz' - acts down there. At first I saw the Josh Owen Band..really nice handmade music. Cool act! Then I spent some time at the Harbour and returned for the finishing act this night - True Live. And, even though their from Melbourne (well, nobody's perfect), Tumbalong Park has been rocked one more time. With a really interesting mixture of Jazz (at least their instruments were really 'jazzy' - violin, cello, etc..), Rock and lot of cool Hip Hop Beats they got everybody to 'just bounce around'. At the latest when they played their famous song 'TV' and freestyled within this song and covered some lines of 'Back in Black' the whole crowd was with them. It was a complete new experience seeing them live, but it was really great and maybe I became something like a fan ;-)

And now let's just bounce around!

Jazz & Soul rock!

Von Sydney

Since the storm was over today, it was the first day we managed to go to the Sydney Jazz Festival at Darling Harbour...we went straight to the main stage at Tumbalong Park were the main act started at about 6 p.m...and that act was no one else than Kate Ceberano...and, I can't say it in an other way...Kate rocked the crowd! She started with some really classical jazz songs which showed that she has a great voice, but which didn't made the crowd moving too much(well, it's jazz..) but then she started to mix up some jazz and soul styles and sang some of her favorite songs and maaaaan, that was so great. That voice, that soul...great combination...and she had so much fun with her band on stage...a really really great concert. And it was really cool to see that this jazz & blues concert had an audience of very great variety. young, old, tourists, aussies...and all were having a great time. Thx to Jazz, Soul...and Kate!

The storm is over now...

Von Eastern Beaches

Just came home from the beach..maaaaaaaaan that looks really really bad. Since there wasn't that much of a disaster to see in the city of Sydney one could really see that the thunderstorm that hit NSW during the last 2 days did some damage to the eastcoast. But we're here in the Sydneyarea have been really lucky...when you look at the Huntervalley or Newcastle...these both areas really suffered during the last 2 days and had to cope with a lot of victims(have a look at the sydney morning herald).

Today everything was calm again and it felt like nothing ever happened...but right now we really should hope that the people in Newcastle and the Valley will get enough support to rebuild their homes and lifes as soon as possible!

Deep Sea 3D

Since the weather today wasn't thaaaaaaat good we decided, after an enormous shopping trip ;-), to go the movies today. To be precise, to go the the LG IMAX Theatre which has the world's biggest screen. There we saw the movie mentioned above. But the beginning wasn't that impressive....after receiving our cool looking 3d glasses, we happened to see the first trailer and then, all of a sudden, everything stopped, the lights turned on again and the staff told us that they're experiencing some problems and that it would take about 30 minutes to fix it...so we waited there for half an hour, entertained by cool hiphop, r'n'b and soul music ;-)

But after 30 minutes it really continued and we could experience the 3d adventure on the world's biggest screen (let's mention it a few more times ;-)).

It was really interesting, and really 3D ;-) Nice 50 minutes dive through the deep sea...but, to be honest, I'd really appreciated to see some more sharks and whales - but that's my personal oppinion :)

And, right now, I am really tired after seeing the 'Legend of Zorro' on Foxtel and listening for about 90 minutes to the bad accent of Antonio Banderas ;-) Soo, good night and don't forget: use sunscrean! :)

We will rock you...

...this headline is a big thank you to Queen...since Queen is the reason for our long weekend as Queen celebrates birthday on Monday ;-)

(sorry for that bad joke, but I simply had to make it ;-) ).

But here, for all Aussie, British and other guys who like to sing a long during our public holiday...

God save our gracious Queen,
Long live our noble Queen,
God save the Queen!
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us;
God save the Queen!

O Lord, our God arise,
Scatter her enemies
And make them fall;
Confound their polities,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On Thee our hopes we fix,
God save us all!

Thy choicest gifts in store
On her be pleased to pour;
Long may she reign;
May she defend our laws,
And ever give us cause
To sing with heart and voice,
God save the Queen!1

Not in this land alone,
But be God's mercies known,
From shore to shore!
Lord make the nations see,
That men should brothers be,
And form one family,
The wide world over.

So...thx to the Queen and keep on going old lady..;-)

stand up - comedy

The other day I was walking down George St. heading for the harbour when I saw something funny. Well, actually not really funny for all people involved and not funny in a sense of a good joke, but funny in a kind of slap-stick style. So I was passing an intersection at George St...it wasn't peak hour anymore, so not much cars on the street. Actually there were only 3 cars on one lane waiting for the lights to flash green. They were standing in the same lane, one behind another. The first car was some kind of family car, the secon was a Taxi and the third was a police jeep. It was pretty calm on the street, nothing unusual happened and then, all of a sudden, the taxi bumped into the car in front of it...still red traffic lights..nothing had changed, but the taxi was bumping into the other car...and then, you really could see the peoples faces....the guy in the bumped car was kind of "wtf!?!?", the taxi driver shook his head, looked into the mirror and was acting like "man, it's not my day..." and the 3 people in the police car were looking at each other in a way like "did this really happen?" then put on their lights, put on their street safety jackets and got out of the car heading for the taxi..with a little smile on their face...not because the like crashing cars (and apparently nothing worse happened, it was very low speed of course) but because the situation was so strange...well, I guess it's hard to describe, but it really had this Mr. Bean - charme...so, at least, funny for me ;)

Humor lies in the eye of the beholder (or something like this ;) ).

that's not all, is it? ;-)

great offer =)

Thank you!

Looks like the City of Sydney exactly knew that I wanted to do a thank you post...yesterday when passing the opera there was a huge screen with thank you massages on it, cool themed background music...nice idea (the logo of the sponsor doesn't really matter I think)...

So thank you to all those you sent me msgs or mails two days ago :)



Furthermore I had some 'fun' with my laptop yesterday and during last week in generall...

there you go...

Von Windows XP Pr...

Von Windows XP Pr...

I love Win XP ;-) Actually I was so close to throw the f..ing laptop out of the window...the 4th time within one week...but since I'm writing here and adding pics and all that you can see that it's 'working' again...after spending some time (man, I could have done such usefull things in that time...) in the dos-mode and remembering former times I just manipulated the booting-sequence...let's see how long this will work out ;-)

But thx to those experiences, I'm pretty sure that my next notebook will be a macbook ;-)

And now, gotta go and catch the last sunrays...

Take care!

btw: have I mentioned yet that I was skydiving? wooooohooooooo :)