As you may have recognized this site was offline for a couple of days. My provider decided once again to change the IP adress and since my “administrators” (my parents 
) were on vacation I could not find out the new address remotely and had to wait until they got back home.
Archive for July, 2009
Back online…
Friday, July 24th, 2009Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
Saturday, July 18th, 2009I have to admit I’m a big fan of the Harry Potter stories written by J.K Rowling. That means I read all the books and watched all the movies so far. And I had to see the new one as well of course. Knowing the book, it is a hell of a story and very exciting especially at the end. Fair enough, for a movie it is always hard to keep up with a book and I always lower my expectations for a movie for which I have read the book already. This film has good and bad. I think the special effects are well done and there are also a couple of funny parts but the middle part feels way too long. I was also disappointed by the last scene which is supposed to be the highlight of this 6th part of the Harry Potter sequels. Overall I think you have to see it if you are a big Harry Potter fan such as me and there is still hope that the last part is going to be the best Harry Potter movie ever 
The Federal Reserve Bank NY gold vault
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009Last Monday our company organized to do the Tour through to see the FED gold vault and I didn’t want to miss that. It was an easy commute since the FED is located only 2 blocks away from our office. After the usual security screening and depositing all bags, cameras, cell phones etc, the tour started at the coin exhibition that shows some of the oldest coins from the ancient greece up to the newest coins out on the market. Highlight of that room was definitely the most expensive coin of the world the “Double Eagle” from 1933 which was auctioned off for 7.6 mio USD in 2002. Then we saw a short film about the EROC (the East Rutherford Operations Center) where the Federal Reserve Bank stores the Cash for the districts of NY and NJ since 1992. Before it used to be in vaults above the gold vault in NY city. After the movie the tour continues to the gold vault which is 86 feet (26m) below see level and the deepest basement in Manhattan completely surrounded by rock and holds about approx. 190 billion USD worth of gold. We were walking through the cylindric entry door which locks air- and waterproof and got a glimpse on some of the gold.
There were no pictures allowed but you can find some nice ones here.
Brüno
Sunday, July 12th, 2009
After watching Borat in 2006 I kind of knew what to expect from Brüno but I guess I was expecting more. To be honest I was disappointed. I don’t know why Sacha Baron Cohen actually picked an Austrian character for this role but I was hoping to see more jokes about Austria like he did with Kazakhstan in Borat. Most of the good jokes he made are already in the preview and they are really hilarious and you get some good laughs watching that movie but the only two connections he makes in the movie are Adolf Hitler and Arnold Schwarzenegger. I don’t know how they are gonna dub that movie for the German market since he is – or better trying to – speaking German in a couple of scenes with English subtitles. Why would you take a Swedish co-actor (Gustaf Hammersten) and try to speak German with him when every native speaker can tell that their German sucks. A couple of times the syntax was wrong and they were far off from having an Austrian dialect. And why would you start the movie by explaining the Austrian character and his beloved home town Vienna but walking through the streets of Berlin? Which was easy to tell by the way since all the registration plates of the parked cars on the street in the first scene were German. I think for the US market it doesn’t really matter since no one here will understand those flaws and the goal was more to show Americans and their stereotypes. Once again after Borat. Overall I don’t think it’s worth to spend the money on the movie. Looking at the current statistics I’m alone with that opinion. Brüno was Nr 1 in the US movie charts this weekend.
re: Eating around the office
Thursday, July 9th, 2009There is so many more places to eat around our office that I haven’t mentioned in my post back in May. Only god knows how much longer we will be at our current location but I want to add one of my newest favorites to the list:
Zeytuna is really close to our office and has a lot of choices for food. You can create your own custom and fresh salad at the salad bar or you can get some custom nice warm stuff at the buffet or you can even go to the grill and get your fresh prepared burger or sandwich. You can also get grilled tuna or salmon if you wish or you can hit the sushi bar if you are graving for raw fish. I’m glad I found out about this place today and it’s gonna be one of my first options on my list if I want to go for quick take-out food.
Signs of Recession
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009However you want to name the latest world wide crises. If its a recession or depression or whatever…I think we all can feel an impact. In NY City it was really visible during February and March since shops/streets and restaurants were completely empty. Places that were filled last year during lunch breaks were nearly empty. Due to all the tourists coming into the city (the EUR/USD fx rate is still nice for European shoppers) during the summer season this got a lot better and streets and shops are now more crowded. Looking at those people carrying full shopping bags (so it seems to me that it’s not just window shoppers) and at the rising stock market you should think that the worst is over and we will see an uptrend in the economy now. My latest experience last weekend shows me that it’s not over yet though. I was craving for Thai food and had to discover that both of my favorite closest Thai restaurants had closed recently. This is just a small example and taken from my recent experience but I’m sure we will still see “out of business” signs until end of this year. And of course there is also a good thing about it. Rents were going down in average and I was able to negotiate mine down a little bit