I was in Baden-Baden yesterday, and wanted to go to Munich. Easy enough, I had to take a train to Karlsruhe, take one from Karlsruhe to Stuttgart and one from Stuttgart to Munich.
When the time comes for me to catch my train I go to the station and there’s a notice saying it would be delayed by half an hour, and on top of that it wasn’t going to Karlsruhe anymore – we would have to get off at another station and take a local train to Karlsruhe.

So that tacked on extra time and I missed my connection. I wound up getting to know some American tourists (SOOO American! The guy was like: yeah, when we went to Rome I had this coffee that was like REALLY strong but in a tiny cup… *smacks head*) and we went for a beer. The bartender was slow, and I missed my next chance at making the connection to Stuttgart.

I grabbed the next possible train going to Stuttgart, and got there at like 11:00. Since it would be 1.5 hrs for the next train to Munich, I called the Stuttgart youth hostel and they told me that they were only taking guests until midnight. So that was no problem, it was just a 15-odd minute train ride away. I waited for the train and realised that I hadn’t bought a ticket, so I ran up to buy one and when I got back down, the train had come and gone.

Now, by the time the next one came, I would be arriving past midnight at the hostel, which was really out of the way. So I thought “fuck it! I’ll take the 12:30 train to Munich! I’ll sleep for the 3 hour ride!”

I had plenty of time to kill, so I grabbed a Leberkäse sandwich (translates as liver cheese, but there’s no liver or cheese – it’s bacon and beef cooked in the shape of a salami and cut up like one, too. Delicious.) and a bottle of water, and the guy at the store where I got the water was closing up, so he gave me a cup of pineapple. The rest of the time was killed at an internet kiosk…

So anyways, I get on the train and manage to find a seat in one of the cabins. We go one stop, and then someone comes in with a seat reservation for where I was sitting. So I had to give up my spot and sit in the hall (I was only allowed on 2 cars with my pass, both of which were full). So there I am, sitting in the hallway – I can’t sleep because (1) it’d be too easy for someone to steal my stuff, (2) people kept walking by and I would have to move every time (the hallway was only around 1m wide) and (3) it’s extremely uncomfortable. So I spent 3 hrs in a cramped hallway, and to top it off, I missed my station.

I get off at the next one and have to wait another 20-odd minutes surrounded by loud, drunken 18-24 year olds, take the train for a few stops, and then I still had to get to a hostel.

I call them up, and they have no room. I call another hostel, and they only have single rooms, and they wanted 70€!!! So I went on a 30-minute long walk to a few hotels from my guide, only to find that they’re all either (a) full, (b) over 50€ to get in, or (c) nonexistent (the one I really wanted to go to seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth).

So there I am, in the middle of Munich, with nowhere to stay, at around 4:30 AM. So I sit down at the train station, and kill time reading my travel guide and writing in my notebook. At around 6AM I get some coffee (no breakfast places were open yet cuz Germans are weird with business hours so I was hungry, too) and tour the old city on my own. By the end, my feet are killing me, I’m limping, and it’s only 8:30 by the time I get back to the train station. The hostel I’m at now (where I wound up sleeping from noon to 6 pm) did not start check-in until 11:30. So then I still had a big chunk of time to kill, because even if I wanted to do something, my feet were hurting too much to do any walking.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m loving it here, but today was just one of those days…

The film is about Sun Woo (Lee), who is assigned to tail his boss’ lover, whom his boss suspects of infidelity (ironically enough, the boss has a wife as well). Sun Woo is told that if she is found to be unfaithful, he must kill her. Upon confirming her cuckoldry, his conscience does not allow him to kill her; when his boss finds out about this, loads and loads of violence result, and Sun Woo opens up a Kimchi jar full of whoop-ass. The movie is definitely not as brutal as Oldboy or Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, but it’s still a very violent movie, with incredible timing, gradually escalating to the final showdown.

The movie was gorgeously shot, with some fantastic scenes as well as excellent sound. Everything was absolutely top-notch. Definitely one of the better movies I’ve seen over the last while. Not only was it well done, I also had a lot of fun watching it.

****½

The story centres on a pair of friends (played by Tadanobu Asano and Shou Aikawa) one of whom has aspirations to become a jujitsu champion. Tokyo gets destroyed, with non-zombie people living behind high walls, with the rich exploiting the poor, with the only chance for any significant cash earnings being in the fighting ring, where they pit the living against zombies.

Overall, there was a lot of random comedy, but nothing was really funny enough, with a lot of deadpan humour, but not coming anywhere near the better Japanese comedies. The movie felt like it was dragging on, and if I have to look at my watch repeatedly in a film, odds are it’s not gonna be too great. And it wasn’t.

**½

Für meinen ersten Artikel möchte ich über Deutsch lernen schreiben. Mein Deutsch ist nicht sehr gut, aber ich kann genug verstehen, um einfache Gespräche zu führen und ein Bisschen reisen. Ich weiß, dass Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) schon einen sehr interessanten (und lustigen) Vortrag über die deutsche Sprache hielt, aber ich muss auch meine Gedanken und Gefühle ausdrücken.

Als ich anfing Deutsch zu lernen, hatte ich schon Jiddisch gelernt, und es war nicht einfach, um Deutsch zu lernen, sondern war es ein Bisschen leichter für mich. Aber das ist der einzige Vorteil; es gibt mehr Unterschiede als Ähnlichkeiten.

Zum Beispiel: auf Jiddisch sagt man etwas wie “ich habe nicht keine Zeit” (איך האב נישט קיין צײט), aber auf Deutsch ist es natürlich “ich habe keine Zeit”. Ob man “nicht keine” sagt, muss er wirklich ein Bisschen seltsam sein. Meine Deutsche Lehrer haben mir gesagt, dass ich nicht das sagen muss.

Leider habe ich jetzt keine andere Ideen darüber zu schreiben, also ich werde das später weitermachen. Ich bin zu müde auf Deutsch zu denken… Entschuldigen Sie mir bitte für das furchtbares halb-Artikel… Ich werde das nennen “Deutsch Lernen, Teil 1.”

For my first Article, I’d like to write about learning German. My German is not very good, but I can understand enough to hold simple conversations and to do a bit of travelling. I know that Mark Twain already delivered a very interesting (and funny) speech on the German language, but I also have to express my thoughts and feelings.

When I started learning German, I had already learned Yiddish, and learning German wasn’t simple, but it was a little easier for me. However, that was the only advantage; there are more differences than similarities.

For example: in Yiddish one says something like (loosely translated as) “I don’t have no time”, whereas in German it’s of course (yet another loose translation) “I have no time”. If one says “don’t [have] no …”, he must really be a little strange. My German teachers told me that I must never say that.

Unfortunately, I have no more ideas to write about, so I will continue this later. I’m too tired to think in German… I’m sorry about this sad excuse for a half-post… I’ll call this “Learning German, Part 1.”

Since I’ve been taking German for the last zwei semesters, ich figured ich would brush up on the ol’ Deutsch, and gehe nach Deutschland. Ich depart am 11. August, und ich komme back am 27. August. Ich even prepared ein Bisschen by reading “Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen“. Now I’ve gotta arbeit on the grammar. Und comprehension. Comprehension ist key. Ob ich can speak it, I’ll still have to understand what the locals sagen to me. Mein Plan, by the way, ist zu get around sprechen as little Englisch as possible. I don’t want all those German lessons to go to waste. Going alone will also contribute to the development of mein Deutsch-skills as ich will habe less incentive zu speak Englisch.

I haven’t worked out a complete itinerary yet, aber I know that ich will land in Paris, take einen train to Köln, und dann ich have some plans for the city, though I go back to Paris via Köln so I’m sure ich could cut down the Zeit spent there the first time if ich kann make up for it in the end.

I’d love zu go to Bad Homburg, too—just outside of Frankfurt am Main—it’s where Linotype ist located (the company ist eine major designer and distributor of fonts.) Ich e-mailed them asking if sie offer tours mit any historische merit or something similar, though ich have nicht heard back from them yet.

I’ll post meine Pläne as they come up and if ich habe any spare Zeit while I’m there (doubtful) ich kann possibly blog ein Bisschen.

For those of you who really can’t understand this post (even though you should–I decided to be fair in what words I substituted), consult LEO, or take a German class. My German is better than the Germlish in which I posted… I should do some German blogging, though. It’d be fun. With translations, of course.

We get there at around 7:30 and it’s not very busy, maybe around 60% full. After being greeted by the (gorgeous) hostess, we were seated at our window-side table, getting a great view of the passers-by.

We ordered a half-bottle of saké, we each got an order of Tori Kara Age (fried spicy chicken marinated in saké, garlic, ginger, soy sauce and chilli pepper) and Wakamono ramen (braised pork, grilled chicken, shrimp, seasonal vegetables, naruto and wakame in a dashi broth).

The saké was quite tasty, and I’m convinced it was not Hakutsuru. It had a nice toasted rice flavour and went down very smoothly. It would have been better had we been provided with a small towel so we could handle the saké, as the little bottle got quite hot and napkins are not too thick.

The Tori Kara Age was a real disappointment. While the chicken WAS tender, and it came with a nice creamy sauce, the combination of ingredients was rather weak in terms of how strong the taste was. Nothing had enough presence, but they were too strong to be written off as “subtle.” Furthermore, for a breaded chicken item, there was definitely not enough breading, leaving us with a rather unsatisfactory lump of mostly-moist chicken.

Now, we came to Wakamono primarily for the ramen. Osaka’s specialty is apparently ramen, so we needed an alternate source for our noodly needs. We felt rather cheerful, having these large, pretty bowls of ramen placed in front of us:

I figured I would first try the broth, as a good broth is the key to a good ramen. Well, the broth was not only slightly disappointing, it was also extremely revolting. A miso broth that doesn’t taste like miso is one thing. A miso broth that tastes like salty sesame oil is a whole other ballgame. The shrimp and chicken just tasted bland, while the BBQ pork (char siu / chashu)retained its flavour. A huge letdown.

Finally, we decided to have dessert. Skrud went for the green tea ice cream, which had what looked like some sort of fruit coulis on it, though dorayaki and mandarin oranges (à la Sakura) seem to be the best accompaniments to green tea ice cream. I, on the other hand, decided to try the ginger crème brûlée; I love crème brûlée, but this was under-charred on top, so it didn’t have the right crackle, instead crumbling at the touch. Furthermore, since it was inadequately torched, the cream inside was too cold. It gets points for being tasty, but it was still lacking in the quality department.

Overall, it was just alright, and I’d have to give it maybe a 2/5. Pros: Inexpensive, attractive hostess, everything but the ramen was okay. Cons: The ramen sucked, and nothing stood out.

So, without any further ado…

My review of HoudahSpot as seen on MacZOT.com

– I always had a bit of a problem with the graphical Spotlight interface, finding it kind of awkward and unintuitive in some cases. It didn’t fit in with the search style found in iTunes, with AND and OR queries graphically accessible, rather than a single line of text to type in. The command line utility mdfind is a little better, but sometimes I just like a pretty interface for dealing with things like this. HoudahSpot responds to this problem beautifully, creating a nice graphical search utility that is exactly what Spotlight should be. I’m glad to try it and hope the BlogZOT works out well so I can have a copy for free, though it’s not so expensive that I would not just buy it myself. –

NOTE: If you’re seeing this on June 16, 2006 head over to MacZOT, you might be able to get a Free copy of HoudahSpot

Search easily in Tiger, Mac OS X, with HoudahSpot

MacZOT.com Fans want Pzizz because ‘According to the National Sleep Foundation, sleep deprivation and its effect on work performance may be costing U.S. employers some $18 billion each year in lost productivity. Another study pushes this cost to over $100 billion.’ – link to full article

Always glad to contribute to the cause!

Seeing as the previous rant also contained my reasons for disliking hockey I’ll get to some of the more specific rants.

The aspect of sports I hate more than the watching of the sports themselves is “sports fever.” I don’t care who wins. In fact, I hope the Canadiens lose as soon as possible. If they do, there will be much less playoff-watching around me. The other day at the dinner table, everyone had to be watching the game while eating, so I was the one who volunteered to take the seat with the back facing the television. The highlight of the evening was when the Canadiens score while I was in mid-bite, everyone jumps up and yells, while I don’t even break the movement from my plate to my mouth. I just don’t get why people care so much. All I ever get is “well, you get caught up in the fever!” But why is there fever in the first place? They’re not really doing ANYTHING! Or sometimes I get the “local pride” sort of argument: does the ability of a small group of a city’s residents to perform well in sports determine a city’s worth? Most players aren’t from here anyway! It’s just saying “we bought better players than you!” It accomplishes absolutely nothing.

I don’t really care too much what other people do, but it’s when I’m seeing friends (and significant others) that it starts to bug me; I want to spend time with people where everyone can enjoy what we’re doing. I’m always willing to accommodate others, but they use the excuse “oh, but this is only happening once! We can go out anytime, we can see that movie anytime…” Well, every moment of your life happens only once. So deal with it. Watch the highlights for the really “amazing” plays, see the scores, let a night of it go. For fuck’s sake, it’s just people hitting a projectile into a net! No story, no depth, no relevance…

I just want it to fucking end. Stupid goddamn hockey. I don’t hate it so much normally, it’s just when it starts to interfere with my life.