Snafu

...that's my newly discovered word! Look it up...

Jack is at work migrating CVS, and I am listening to Morcheeba and catching up on a pile of emails and blogs. I wanted to go and discover the joy of wireless Internet at a cafe nearby. . . So after getting a cup of hot chocolate at Einstein Cafe and organising myself at a bar stool facing Gendarmenmarkt I was all ready for some relaxing time... except that the Internet was not free, and I didn't want to fork out 10 Euros for it... and since I didn't want to give up and go home, I fired up Eclipse to work on my portfolio website, but the coffee world was against me as a guy pulled up next to me and started chain smoking cigars. I had to get some fresh air, and after going for a bit of a walk ended up at home all comfy on the couch.

Last weekend we were in Riga, but I'll let Jack write about that. I'll only post something that we found in one of the local publications for English-speakers. A happiness indicator - apparently in Russia only 2% of people are happy, as opposed to Iceland with a staggering 94% happies. And Moldova is sitting at -12%, which I suppose means that they're 12% unhappy, right?

We've been pretty slack at going to the gym for the last couple of weeks, considering that I had some weird cold that lasted for about 3 weeks, gurr. But this week we've been twice, and one morning after the gym I was reading The Age and discovered this article. In Holland they've opened a 'naked' gym, where on Sundays people can come and work out naked. Now, the nudist beaches of Wansee are disturbing, but seeing an old naked guy/gal running on a treadmill is definitely not my thing...

This Thursday there was a "do" after work for our unit, which was advertised to everyone as a 'cozy relaxing evening to spend together'. And thus after a 20 minute ride on the U-Bahn after work about 25 of us squeezed ourselves into a space equivalent of our lounge room, at a French restaurant called 'La Raclette'. I think the amount of space must have has something to do with the managerial requirement for having a "cozy" evening. Food and drinks was paid for, and it was indeed a very nice relaxing night. The menu consisted of onion soup, green salad, and of course raclette. I've tried to find a picture of the oven that they had during the night, and this is a bad picture of something similar. It basically involved a huge triangular hack of cheese suspended between two heating rods with the melted cheese dripping into two plates below. Actually while looking for a good image I came across a Raclette Australia, which I didn't know existed... so I think we'll have to organise one from these guys once we're back in the country.

The rest of the night involved desert and too much free grog. The music entertainment for the night involved a chap by the name of Las Vegas. He sang a few covers followed by quite a number of his own songs, which from the limited amount I could understand, were very good. He has a local blues band by the name of The Soul of Elvis... yesss. Conversation topics with various co-workers for the night included, but not limited to: how long have people been at Aperto, marriage and why people do it, movies about WWII and why there isn't much more new stuff film makers can say because it's all been said before, Holocaust and why young Germans still feel guilty, university IT degree and it's (ir)relevance to working in IT, the Marilyn Manson cover of 'Sweet Dreams' by Eurythmics, why we think Berlin is cool, why doesn't the DJ have anything by The Doors or Cake, why do all guys at work are so skinny and have no arse, why age does(n't) matter, why we should now drink vodka shots to world peace... I ended up getting home closer to 4am in the morning, and after having 3.5 hrs of sleep had to get up at 7:30am. After taking two panadols and donning on my sunnies I crawled to work. I think I must have been yawning and fidgeting on the chair too much during a weekly technical meeting that one of our managers came up to me afterwards and said that us - frontenders, don't really have to attend this meeting, as it is very boring for us. I didn't disagree and spent the rest of the day trying to stay awake and not throw up. Conclusion: it was the best work 'do' I've ever had.

To finish off this post here are two pictures of the cheesecake that Jack and I made this week. Which, unlike every other baked good that our oven produced, has turned out great and almost nothing of it is left. And still on the kitchen topic, here are the two espresso cups I bought yesterday... even though I normally stop myself from buying things for the house, as it would be hard to get them back to the land Down Under, for these ones I just couldn't resist (they're ceramic). I believe this is called having nesting instincts :)