Chopstick Frogs: We ate this!

yes, we ate this: photo taken when we where in beijing, me and the fjord's chrises feasting away... luckily we are not the only ones who think that frogs and chopsticks make for a delicious match, there's more evidence here and here :)

Update

So why why why is nothing happening here anymore, people have asked. Ok. I've been busy, on planes to Germany (miriam's opening etc), on planes to Switzerland (dani's goodbye, including a mexican dinner party, francesco's birthday, plans for christmas in san francisco, sledding with megi, drinking with caro yana simon and lots of snow). I've spend too much time partying on palestinian fundraising parties (trying to capture sal on chip, trying to cope with the shishas). I've started working from a shared workspace in Angel, and our happy family has moved to a happy family house right over in Stoke Newington. Welcome wireless! Welcome garden parties! Paradise! Apart form that, I'm doing some client design work as well as spending ridiculous hours working for Uni (hey, you are getting better people - but i HATE latecomers!). Most of all, I've discovered paper, sketch, thoughts offline, so this is goodbye til next month. Bye and kiss, A.

New

what a perspective: while alex's front window in berlin-neukölln/kreuzberg frames the aftermath of yesterday's death match, anab's back window in ahmadabad shows these nice little monkeys (btw i want them bagged and smuggled back into england, for me, please)

Doing the Berlin Thing

arriving here, god it's cold. sort out the heating. whose flat is this anyway? don't know, and they're off. let's not go out too soon again.

berlin is still a hideaway - not for kriegsdienstverweigerer but for christmas escapists from all over the brd. we've made it to THE city we'd like to stay in, so - chill, be here, live here for a couple of days before the circus moves on again.

Great Quality Frog

((in case you haven't met her, this little lady is adrian's niece no 3 of 4))

Hometown

i hate being in bremen. i arrive, i look in the mirror, and i can't see myself: my spiegelbild did a runner. i know, once i'll have left here, it'll take the better part of a week for it to come back to me.

i am 80 years old, walking the same streets all over again. no surprises anymore, i know every step, every stone along the way. i am 15 now, kissing a man i kissed 15 years ago. i am 15 forever, doing the xmas roam through friends' families who can't see nothing but the past in us.

31 again, i get depressed about the state of things. the street where my mother lives, it's disintegrating, dying. every half year another death in another house. greedy people slip handwritten messages into the letterbox: "are you thinking of selling your house?"

it's the night of the 25th, i've got mail from a friend: "got to get out of here fast. will go hamburg first, then berlin." that's exactly how i feel, that's exactly what i'll do.

Love Düsseldorf

love my new shoes, love the 12 hour flat

Autobahn

karlsruhe, frankfurt. junkies outside, dinner at steigenberger's. thoroughly fed, reasonably drunk: drive on. köln, düsseldorf. what's next?

i love driving the autobahn at night. tic toc toc, it's a quarter to two - we sing the beatles, we shout madonna. the worse the music, the better. clusters of light keep appearing around us, fall back into the darkness again: villages and towns shine in "Abyss"-like aesthetics.

other cars, more cars, floods of cars: each of them a cell on four wheels, hurrying towards god-knows-where, passengers tuned in to the same sounds as we, maybe. arrival in düsseldorf. passing another main station, more junkies, Kraftwerk's studio as well.

So much space ...

traveling through the woods, i caught myself taking measure of space inbetween trees. wow! so much space! i'm re-adjusting environments. the flats in germany are that big, whole rooms tend to get lost in the winter cause they're too far away to walk to in the cold. i guess it doesn't help that i'm using the hfg karlsruhe's graphic studio - you could conveniently fit in the old rca studio here four times.

Sunrise over Stansted Airport

((pics: uk kids do the snow test; dinner with boys; gurkendoktor; this is how i looked like on the most successful day of my life))

i've missed my flight to baden. ok, it's frankfurt then, a couple of hours later. stansted airport isn't a visually pleasant place to hang out, so i hug my laptop, close my eyes, enter the soundscape. womens' high heels klick-klacking by, i love it. the rotary rhythmical screeching of the luggage trolleys gets on my nerves, while the electrical humming of the little indoor electro cars calms me down again, puts me to sleep.

after two hours i'm so lulled in, i'm trying hard to miss my second flight of the day.

no way. checking in, having a coffee, boarding. i realize my jacket has been nicked. it is somehow consoling that i didn't expect this to happen at all - my series of unfortunate events draws its resources form the unexpected, so no chance the plane will crash, this time.

did i mention that, after the short shock early on, i became more and more amused? - the plane landed in frankfurt, my amusement became giggles: i've lived outside of germany for so long now that, whenever i return here, i see a strange funny people in front of me, outside of me. i can watch them, learn to describe them as a foreigner would, and i think i like them a lot. all these tall strong men working at the airport - *let's prototype the german man!* - , their pose so crumbles and falls apart when they have to deal with the wishes of some sweet japanese tourists (nobody understanding a word the other one is saying, of course).

it has been snowing, the country is white, it is beautiful. the uk children get overexcited: "dad, it's proper snow, it makes 'crck' when you step on it!" i am getting worried about the snow experiences these kids have made back home.

where there's snow, there's chaos, so the friend who's coming to get me is stuck in a traffic jam. i jump on a train from frankfurt (little london) to mannheim (little new york) to meet him there. the wording onboard the deutsche bahn is as odd as ever; the typographic landscape passing by is adorable. you don't get to see such edgy, sometimes quite ancient, but often very characterful outside type in london, and i guess i miss it.

karlsruhe, home-of-the-german-police-city, finally. i have dinner with the boys. knackered. watching dvd, we all fall asleep around a fellow g4.

Crazy Swiss! I'm getting homesick

6. Zürcher Samichlausschwimmen (in plain uncomforting English w/o the Swiss German Schnörkel this would be '6th Zürich Santa Claus Swim'). It's the Limmat, it's the 6th of December.