sunday's confession

watched TV: Oliver's Twist- watched dvd: The Wire

I.. just can't get enough of Jamie Oliver's cooking show. I mean it's only shown once a week on TV, showing two episodes per program. Usually it shows three recipes, for the drink, main course, salad or dessert. I used to think that Jamie Oliver's cuisines were difficult and expensive. But I kept watching the show anyway, because I think that Oliver is such a personality. And it turns out, after I push myself go into the kitchen more, they're not that difficult or expensive. They're easy and quite affordable. And they're rich of useful tips in around the kitchen, delivered in a hip way.

But one thing is for sure: Jamie Oliver's cooking show is not for people who don't touch their food.

Watched dvd: The Wire

To organizers of Hamburg Filmfest.

I really don't know. Last year I made a pact that I will use my telephone so thrifty for a year so that I could afford my tickets to watch 8 of the movies which were on Hamburg Filmfest. I was that determined. And I was also determined to watch the next year, and if possible, buying the Dauerkarte.

Your advertisement trailer is amazing. I'm not exaggerating to say that is the best advertisement running in theatres I had ever seen. Not only best, it's also the smartest, most efficient, intriuging, appropriate, and just simply cool. But really, it is very very smart-hip-and-cool all at once. Good job, Ole Peters.

However, after I got your print publication, you know, the Hamburg Pur special edition thingie, I was only interested in watching 2 movies after quick zapping, and after a more serious reading, I was only interested in watching only 6 of them. Compare this number to 14 last year, when I finally watched 8 of them. Oh, I already said that. I also remember that placed the timetable behind my bedroom door so that I saw it everytime before I went to bed. It's full of circles and doodles. Regardless, I think I would settle on watching 3 of them this year.

I have no idea whether this had something to do with my decreasing interest in the movie world in general, or the movie and program that you're showing this year is not that interesting. Or the fact that despite I watched 8 last year, I left the theatres with one movie I didn't understand (the words. The story, I got it), one movie so strange that I insisted to ignore it and keep schtum, three ordinary movies, and three quite good movies. And one of the quite good ones is Michael Cunningham's work. Or maybe unlike last year my experimenting spirit is not that high anymore, at the same time my bank account balance is also not as high, so that decision was made.

This year, three movies I'm gonna watch are The King, because I'm a fan of Gael Garcia's works, Manderlay to get a feeling how Dogville was stylishly directed, and Adam's Apples, because at least I watched one non-english movie. Ow, great. Just cross checking the diaries, and it turns out that Manderlay will be on Tuesday night. Ok-kay.. I switch to Hooligans, since I am not available Tuesday nights.

So, we'll see what will happen on those nights. Great job with the festival, by the way. Keep up the good work. Always looking forward to meeting the filmmakers after the showing. So hopefully the three of 'em will be there.

price and prejudice

Current books read: Disclosure by Michael Crichton

Today, I went to a vegetable store in Wandsbek, near where a friend of mine lives. I neeeded onions to make Bratkartoffeln. So I started looking for it out of the store nearby the mushrooms, broccolis, Blumenkohl, but it's not there. So I went in the store. The owner was attending another customer, but she was leaving. So he said "Guten Tag." to me, and I answered back.

I was walking towards the onion, but the store owner asked me what did I need. I said "Mmm.. Zwiebeln." while pointing and moving to the stack. Normally in stores like this, you go yourself to the stack, put what you need in plastic bag, and bring them to the cashier to be weighed and pay the price. But instead he asked me, "Wieviel?". Since I didn't know, I said, "Umm.. Fünf Stücke?" Then he put the amount that I think is more than five pieces. Since I'm eating salad tomorrow, and I like red onions better in salads than the normal one, I asked, "Haben Sie auch rote Zwiebeln?" He looked to the case that looked empty, and asked "Eine reicht?". I said yes. He put everything in a paper bag and said, "Fünfzig cent." Really?

The price for the onions was 1.99 Euro per kilo. And I believe I just bought more than quarter kilo. And he added up the red onions. I said how generous..

But then he asked whether I needed tomatoes. I don't eat tomatoes, normally. Most of the time, I hate it. If it's on my plate I eat it, but if it's not, I don't want them anywhere near my plates. So to make the story short, I said no. He said one Euro for all of this, while he handcupped some. I insisted to say no. Then he said, "Fünfzig cent." Hmm..?

You know, vegetables are unfortunately expensive in Germany. Cheap vegetables can be acquired in Hamburg for example in Fischmarkt, but rarely that you can get 100% of them in 100% good condition. Sometimes 60% of them are 100% good, sometimes 70% of them are more than 90% good, sometimes.. you do the math this time. But it's surely cheap.

So I was thinking, did he do the Fischmarkt trading tactics here? And to make matters worse, the other vegetable store nearby (possibly they are in competition) closed recently.

I went home and started cooking my Bratkartoffeln. Two of the nine (nine!!) onions are 60% good, the rest, 100% good. The red onion, 100% good.

Is it just me, or prejudiced world has also gotten into me?

Have a nice weekend, lads.

tale of two ciries (it's not typo)

Current books read: Time of Your Life by Neil Gaiman; Disclosure by Michael Crichton - expected TV program: Wetten Dass...? 1.10. ZDF - study reading: this and that, here and there

Sit down. This will take a while. And you may find it boring. I'm a talk about two TV series that I've been watching for the past two weeks. Both are american series. The first, is ...

The West Wing

My first encounter with The West Wing was when this Emmy-Globes-SAG-awards-decorated series first aired in Indonesia. At that time, as my English was still below average, I spent most of the airing time not watching it, but reading the sub-titles. And I still didn't understand what were they talking about. I managed to stay awake late to watch it until the "Indonesia" episode. It was so big, even local newspaper picked the story up, as far as I can remember. After the "Indonesia" episode, I quit watching it. Just because I don't want reducing my sleeping hours reading things that I don't really understand.

It turns out, that The West Wing is so much better than I remembered. There are some reason for this judgment. First, my English that got better here and there. At least now I understand some of the things they are talking about. Second, characters, characters, characters are mostly the reasons why I like or dislike series. The characters in The West Wing, are just remarkable. My favorite is CJ, the press secretary which brings us to my favorite scenes: CJ in the press briefing room.

Third, the one that I watched is the third season. Fourth, it is just superbly written, and not pure entertainment.

I am not gonna talk about its inaccuracy here and there, because I don't know what's accurate or not, and I don't talk politics. :p But let's go back to the characters. The president's character, eventhough I believe is not the central character is also well-developed. He just had enough wit, bravery, charm, love, and sense of humor. A perfect Hollywood-style president.

Now, you may get tired of watching the series because most of them are nothing but lobbying. Seriously. Lobbying here, lobbying there, in this room, in that room, in this restaurant, during the day, early in the morning, on weekends, while flying, and so on, and so on. I will get tired as well, had it not had CJ's briefing scenes. And the non-issues issues.

Now the other series,

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

somehow brings recollections to my childhood. For me, CSI is Hawkeye and Amy twenty years after. My first encounter with CSI, is the super funny TV trailer CBS had some years ago. Super super funny. And that made me want to watch CSI.

After watching CSI, I made a dare to a friend of mine. I develop a story which goes like this.

There was a man born and mistakenly raised by the parents so that he got somewhat disturbed and tolerating violence.Sometimes during his adult life, he committed murder, for motives other than revenge. The police, had to solve this case and find the murderer. The police succeeded, the murderer went to trial. He lost, and served time in jail until the end of his life.

The dare, was to find an appropriate movie or series for every sentence. I forgot how he answered them all, but we both noted the same answer for the third sentence: CSI. And we agreed, not so many series or movies are specializing in only how murder weapon was found, what analysis needed in order to make a case, and so on and so on.

But I don't like CSI. It should be titled Crime Lab 101, or crime lab for dummies because it always comes with, for example: the murder was done at 1:00 pm, right? So that means at that time, this matter hadn't been oxidized with that matter, so that the pressure of this room, would not correspond to that temperature, and the corpse would have not showed this hours of decay. And then one of the crime lab super-member pulled out their super device out of their super case to get the evidence.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but it's just too scientifically sophisticated. Well, maybe their job is scientifically sophisticated. But not that what makes me don't like it. It's the 101 thingie that made me never lose the feeling of being told and taught. And I don't like the acting as well. Especially the guest stars. It reminds me a lot of court room dramas or even Lenßen und Partner. Another bonus: it's missing blue line plot that series made me want to watch them more.

However, it is thousands times better than Detektif Conan (don't know how it's called in English, German, or its original language Japanese :p) which after a while, tells us nothing but solving cases by redoing the "almost impossible" murder. Boring. But seeing almost all of CSI's season one, it's going that way, though.

OK. I'll cut 'em some slack because I watched the first season only. Come on, I don't remember that I was head over heels for FRIENDS as I watched its season one, weren't I? So, I need some rebuttals. One conclusive thing though, it costs a bloody lot of money to solve a murder. Wonder if Indonesian cops could afford it.

See, toldja it would be boring. Sleep tight, tonight.

unimportant

Current books read: - music in ear: - expected TV program: - watched dvd: - study reading:

What did I tell you? What did I tell you??! Hehehee..

Now I'd better get some sleep.

Hide the Park

Current books read: Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, 1996 - expected tv program: KUCH KUCH HOTA HAI, tomorrow!!

Right. I was spending last two weeks like a crazy bastard who's been working constantly twenty four seven. But actually I have not. So did I deserve it? Hmm.. Let's have a long meditation session to answer the question. But for me personally, it doesn't really matter whether I deserve it or not, but at that time, I wanted it.

One of the days of the two weeks is taking a visit to called Soltau that was reached by less than an hour drive, and dropping by Heide Park. The reason? Of course because I want to 'taste' the feeling of being dropped 60 degrees in the biggest wooden roller coaster of the world: Colossos, and the feeling of being dropped vertically from the highest tower drop of the world: Scream. The feeling was superb and to be honest, scary. Respectively.

Colossos

Colossos has a theme music. You know in order to build the mood of excitement/fear/anxiety at the same time. Too bad (or in this case, luckily) I can't enjoy that music for long, because there was no line at all as we were there. Waiting time as I arrived is 0 minutes, and waiting time as I rode it the second, third and fourth (fourth!!) one is 3 minutes. Before you enter the train you can see statistically how Colossos was built. Intimidation.

As I told you, the ride itself is superb. Combination of the drop, speed, turns, just make Colossos a very enjoyable ride. ENJOYABLE??? It's not scary, because you step on something. Well, it's not nauseating, since it doesn't have any loop, and considering that my nausea rate is very very low, I like it. And again, I got some trouble for not sitting down still on my seat, because the wind and the force tried to rip my head off off my body. :)

Scream

Now this is scary. I always make noises when I ride amusement park rides. You know, to make it more excited. But on Scream, I screamed. Involuntarily. Just to make things straight (no pun intended), it was not a high-pitched scream like Ross's. Hehehe.. I thought I knew when the drop will be. But still the drop was amazing. It was one of the scariest 5 seconds of my life.

Scream brought us up with enough velocity, that when in stops, no feeling of being weightless is achieved as we were on top. The voice on the ride suggests we waited 3 seconds, and you are dropped. And this is the amazing part. Your seat goes down with you with the same velocity and accelleration with your ass. I mean body. For around 5 seconds. Gosh.

I know, I'd only been in a drop tower for twice before, but still Scream, deserves to be one of the best ride I've been on. Eventhough I thought previously it will be boring.

The Park

The park itself offers a lot of different rides (well, of course). However, some of the rides are not much scarier that other rides that I had been on before. Heide Park has two Schaukelschiff. Both of them are smaller than Kora-Kora. Other than Colossos, the Park has four roller coasters. Twist is amazingly cool, Big Loop is nauseating, the Swiss sled thingie is interesting, and the mine roller coaster is scary because it's dark.

Still there are two Wildwasserbahn, both of them smaller but much wetter than Niagara-gara. One rafting ride, drier than Arung Jeram. A lot of slow water rides, that if they are all combined into one ride, will be bigger than Istana Boneka. Again, the park is bigger than Dufan, and of course, cleaner, more sophisticated, and more Europe-ish.

The other references were rides in an amusement park in Indonesia. Dunia Fantasi (= Fantasy World or is it World of Fantasy? Hmmm...)

There are still some interesting and cool rides, but still it's missing simulator theater. Ah well, you can't win 'em all can you?

M.I.A.? no! H.I.M.!! please figure out what they are

Current books read: Neverwhere. Neil Gaiman, 1996 - expected TV program: KUCH KUCH HOTA HAI, RTL II, 16. Sept 2005, 20:15 - watched dvd: Alice in Wonderland, Bambi, Dial M for Murder

I don't really know what to say. Two weeks of not posting and shutting myself out of the internet brings a whole lot stress when I got back in. Stress? Yes.. Hehehe...

Well, just being here to post the reason that I wasn't around. I was 'busy' looking at that view for 8 days from the balcony of the room that I woke up in. Click the thumbnail to see the whole image, though. In other words, I was in (I know the grammatically correct word for it in German is auf. But is it supposed to be on in English? I don't think so. Natives please..) Mallorca.

But even before Mallorca, there's a headline that I have to tell you. Let's find some minutes tomorrow.

Anyway, it's all over now, time to get back to the real world. If this world is real. Hehehee.. Alice in Wonderland slash The Matrix euphoria.