jonny goes to england

What about some lovely goose fat on your potatoes? Afterwards you can use it to grease up that squeaky door.

Am Sonntag ging ich an das Meltdown Festival beim Southbank Centre an der Thames. Bei diesem Festival wird jedes Jahr eine Band als “artistic director” ausgewaehlt, und diese kann dann das gesamte Lineup bestimmen. Dieses Jahr war Massive Attack an der Reihe. Ich sah jedoch nur den Auftritt von Massive Attack und keine anderen Acts. Sie lieferten eine fantastische Show mit einem interessanten Display im Hintergrund. Zuerst dachte man es sei nur eine Art Lampe, mehr und mehr entpumpte diese sich jedoch als hochaufloesender Display.

Hier ein Clip, welcher warscheinlich nicht dieselbe Stimmung rueber bringt (ich habe hier keinen Ton, deshalb kann ichs nicht sagen):

Yesterday, I was having a quick dinner at Ping Pong Dim Sum at the south bank branch. Obviously, they serve a big variety of dim sums — that is steamed little pockets filled with different Chinese ingredients. There are buns, puff pastry, dumplings and lotus leaves as wrappers. Buns are basically normal pastry, puff pastry are very soft blown up things (man I really lack the words to describe that!), and dumplings resemble transparent fish skins in looks and taste (just more sticky and less delicious I guess!). The different wrappers can then either be steamed, fried or baked, and get served in typical bamboo boxes (see picture). You order about 3-5 different dim sums for a good meal, each of them around £3.50. The variety in food you eat makes the whole meal enjoyable and quite different to a usual dinner. Modern interior and quick service, certainly good for quick dinners.

Apparently, as I heard through news stories (which I can’t find anymore) and now saw with my own eyes yesterday night, it’s not allowed anymore to wear hats in (certain?) london pubs/bars/clubs! Due to “security reasons”. So that they can also completely monitor your face indoors, wearing hats is not allowed anymore. When will hats be banned from the streets?

Funny enough, just recently BBC reported that a study showed that the massive spending on CCTV cameras failed to cut crime in UK.

Only 3% of London street robberies have been solved using security cameras

What’s their smart plan? Spending even MORE on CCTV.

Guys, you don’t cut crime by security cameras just like you don’t cut bread by looking at it.

I have yet to experience a smooth return travel. The last few times weren’t really optimal!

Last time when I tried to catch a train from Stansted some moron decided to jump in front of the train at the airport. At 8pm on Sunday at an airport! He didn’t only have the wrong intention, he also picked the wrong place and time, and in turn delayed a couple of thousand travelers.

This time my plane got its take-off slot or whatever late which caused to delay everything else.

Anyway, I think the right formula is to pick smaller airports (e.g. City) where waiting times, take off slots, immigration control, baggage reclaim and suicides are easier to organise and cleanup.

Diese Woche sieht so aus:

• Morgen Geburtstag
• Morgen ein Seminar an City Uni von Sabelfeld, einem Forscher aus Chalmers. Chalmers gehoerte zu den Unis, bei welchen ich mich fuer den Master beworben habe. Ende 2005 habe ich dafuer Goeteborg und Chalmers besucht… jedoch kam es nicht zum “jonny goes to sweden” und das ist auch gut so
• Freitag Abend (sehr) kurzen Abstecher nach Basel vom City Airport..

Wikipedia refers to a study from the British Cheese Board which states the following:

A 2005 study carried out by the British Cheese Board claimed that when it came to dream types, Stilton cheese seemed to cause odd dreams, with 75% of men and 85% of women experiencing bizarre and vivid dreams after eating a 20 gram serving of the cheese half an hour before going to sleep.

So I thought I’m going to test this out and I bought a pack of blue stilton. One of my housemates decided to join me in the experiment.

First impression of this cheese was that it’s a rip-off from Gorgonzola. Which is most probably the case given that Gorgonzola’s history is few thousand years old and Stilton only 200. It’s drier than Gorgonzola, a bit milder and more salty. I had my first portion last Sunday, 30g before sleep.

The next morning, I didn’t notice any weird dreams .. however I realised how deep my sleep was. I slept like a rock which is usually not the case. That week I took Stilton twice again, last time on Wednesday night. I went to bed at 12:30 and set my alarm to 08:10. Unfortunately, I woke up after 09:30 with the alarm turned off! Now, everybody who knows me better knows that this happens extremely rarely … for me that’s a sign that Stilton is indeed altering sleep patterns. My housemate who also took blue stilton reports similar deep sleep experiences

So … go to your grocery store, get blue stilton and report back

Under the bridge near to our house I found an abandoned car. With one wheel missing. Quite a stupid place to leave your car .. considering that the owner could have pushed the car 15m further and off the main road!

Looking at the pigeon poo on the street I’m sure the driver of this cabriolet made a small mistake leaving it there

How funny is that. On Friday I had to go my local Barclays branch to make some payments … but it turned out I couldn’t. The bank was out of electricity. The staff just left when I came and they shrugged their shoulder, said sorry and locked the door. Here’s the hand-written note on the door

I returned four hours later — though the branch was still closed

Last saturday I found these guys in covent garden:

For anyone who doesn’t know what they are click here.

I think they were promoting the Sci-Fi-London, the international sci-fi festival taking place this weekend in London.