tvc15

Bambuddha Grove Stoooopid

Lying on the beach in Las Salinas with some friends last Saturday, Bambuddha Grove (read more here) personell had the nerves to call us up twice. If were are coming to their restaurant with our guests tonight? We told them we had booked some other place in the meantime and were surely not coming. Just minutes later they did ring us again. They argued we did place a valid reservation and had to come. I told them in plain English they actually turned our booking down with their stupid advance fee mail and and hung up the phone. It seemed as if they were really low on bookings after the summer season and wanted to cash in on our not so forgotten party of 11 people. Sadly no luck, their greed had bounced back at them.

Apart from this unfriendly event, I can really recommend many places for eating out in Ibiza. We went with our gang to a small open air restaurant in the Dalt Vila part of Ibiza Town, where we had great Spanish dishes and drinks galore. Some other restaurant opened their more or less closed midday kitchen again to come up with lovely tuna and mutton! And being in Ibiza I could survive on the bread and garlic sauce only. You´ll get it as a starter or snack at many places, sometimes combined with olives and other pickles. The only problem is the smell of garlic foaming from your mouth at night or even the day after. But as many people do so, it´s o.k. But it prevents silly chat up lines in clubs...

Ibiza Hangover

There is no cure for the Ibiza hangover but going back, they say! But at least putting some of the shots up will be a cure. Think I´ll start over the weekend, shots are still in the cams. Everything is so tranquilo...

Space: The Final Frontier

It´s That Time Of The Year Again?

Well, not really. But with the summer (and the worlds oil re- serves...) fading, why not hop onto a budget plane and catch a bit of sun, do some extremely funny things and generally HAVE A GOOD TIME with people from all over the world? This is about to happen from tomorrow onwards!

Apart from that, new essential records and books have been added to the sections on the right!

Blitz

Cologne - Hamburg and back in one day. Got up at 5.20, back in 21.30. Five meetings in between and endless Taxi rides, time lost in airport lounges without net access. But I brought a headache over as a present!

But give me two more days at work before we board a much sweeter plane, taking us to a busy weekender in Ibiza, to finish the summer in style. Could be another headache waiting around the corner...

The Day After

Germany has voted. Voted for the golden path between doing nothing and challeng- ing everything. Every one´s a winner to- day: the winner-losers and the losing-winners. And now they have got 30 days to sort the rest out. 29 days left to be precise... OINK!

Observation

In black & white even the most vulgar and innocent street scenes become dramatic observations. As you can see in the photo section Observation to the left. The pictures were taken last Wednesday in Mainz, a boring town half an hour away from Frankfurt.  Or was there really something happening? What is this bright alien on one of them?

The Revolution Is Here?

Nintendo thinks that the video gaming revolution is a controller that looks and is used like a TV remote control. Because people are used to hold one and point it into the direction of a screen. Well, yeah. What can we say? Common sense makes the revolution?

Architecture IV Frankfurt

Spend yesterday in Frankfurt, the city which is nicknamed Bankfurt due to it´s huge concentration of companies from the financial services industry. And those companies tend to reside in high rising buildings. My mobile showed a slight tendency to tinting the pictures blue, so finally we know what the colour of money is. More can be seen in the photo section to the left hand.

Triumph Of Science

French scientists found out that an Email will be answered more likely and faster, if the sender has the same surname as the person written to. Because of the great significance of the surname for  the self-concept of people, they suppose. Hmmm, I guess, this might result in a myriad of Viagra , debt and porn mails send to me by "cousins" soon...

Treibstoff

Sorry for the lack of postings during the last two days, but we went to a party of Treibstoff Recordings on Friday night. Quite good, DJs Marcel Janovky and Andre Galluzzi heated the place up to midsummer temperatures. My shirt was not showing wet spots, it was wet all over when finally made it home (may have ruined the taxis interior...). So check out the event listings on the label page, they might be close to your town: Treibstoff

What Was That?

Shortly after 10 this morning something happened at the Frankfurt stock exchange. Some say it was the jammed computer keyboard of a trader, some say it was someone cashing in on the forthcoming election. Some think it could be a sign of a bigger crash coming...

The Boy Who Heard Music

Building up some tension for a blog start? For some novella being posted for free? Pete Townshend does so. He will offer his story (not the story of his life btw.) from 24th of September onwards on the web: The Boy Who Heard Music

The link to the blog, waiting for his readers to comment, has been added to the Essential Blogs section to the right. If it will not turn out to be essential, we´ll take it off...

Who Wants 110 Euros?

There is nothing better than the vision of Europe, with it´s very own currency and endless shopping possibilities via internet - don´t ya think so? EU was not enough, we needed more and we got more. I love it so much, especially on the days when can´t get rid of my dosh quickly.

Seriously, I tried to order a Playstation 2 gadget during the last three days that is not being sold in Germany (yet). No problem, if the local dealers don´t have it, just browse the web with your credit card handy and get it, I thought.

I tried three times, two shops in the UK and those old chums from FNAC (who are seriously not bothered to pre- sent their page in any other language but French), but no luck. This item will not be shipped outside of the UK and Eire (so why does the website offer shipping-rates to abroad anyway?). Sorry, we cannot take your order, your credit card will not be charged (oh thank you, you´re so sweet). Nous ne prenons pas leur argent avons volontiers toutefois d'envie d'envoyer un emballage sur le Rhin , malheureu- sement malheureusement (Now I know why I avoided Paris all my life...).

Especially nasty is having to go thru the order processes three times, each turn taking between 5 and 15 minutes. Not because I´m an illiterate nerd with a burning passion for typewriters, but because these companies want to know this and that before they decide they are not shipping the item. Why do the FNACFROGS want to know my favorite FNAC shop if they don´t ship certain items to Germany anyway (there could be a quick check before the item is placed in the basket). Why do those British net scalpers want to know my credit card expiry date before they realize Germany is not a county in Eire? Why does the other English "specialist shop" bother sending me a personal mail (think it took more than five minutes of human work time to process it), when they could have excluded the item for foreign sales on their massive page?

Last chance is Norway, but I can´t read any of that. Guess I´ll have to think GLOBAL. Maybe a shop in Peru will  sort me out...

In Search Of...

Read about a guy that tracked the search words that led people to his website for a while. Some of the words are listed below. I wonder what his site is about so people are led there by search engines in the first place...

what are some examples of nonintegers
elephant dick size
difficult iq test
baseball bat ass
goo goo dolls' fuck
fuck e math
fuck sine
you are fucked
i am a fucking idiot
games for people with memory problems
lawyer stupid human why i not
logistic logos
schizophrenia talking god
where do greece get their food
it is something like
obscure secret fucking
nailed without a condom
e^x expansion

The Song Remains The Same

LOL - listened to the new Stones CD today, it does indeed sound like a Stones CD. Just like any Stones CD in the last one hundred years, or was that 150 years already? Can´t blame them, they are doing their thang. One more time, or 150 times more? How old are they together? Anyway, Keith singing does sound a wee bit like Eric Clapton these days... Definitely old school!

Before I forget..

Todays FRAR is:

Step Outside - Housemartins

tvc15 Readers

Since last week I´m able to track where the readers of this blog come from. Last night the first ever reader from Asia (China to be precise) surfed along. So we are waiting for South America, Africa and Oz, leave alone Antarctica...

Shoot To Kill

Why is the subtitle of this blog "Staying sane in an insane world"? Are you really asking? I mean I read headlines like "Shoot to kill - Battle proof Soldiers from Iraq now in action in the homeland USA" every bloody day. Or is that well hidden sanity? Did you hear they are planning to dry New Orleans with a controlled nuke explosion? No? They are not, I made this one up. I´m just trying to figure out what could top all the news we´re already getting.

Or do you really believe there is a Reuters headline today, that the USA are soon going back to producing plutonium for the first time ever since the Cold War? Sadly this is a real message. Only for scientific reasons, to make "space batteries", some sort of nuclear fuel  for a broad range of uses "from satellites to deep space probes". How about getting a few more army helicopters down to New Orleans instead? So can you come up with sane news?

Bambuddha Grove Greed

Some years ago we discovered a fine Thai restaurant called Bambuddha Grove in Ibiza. As we were planning my birth- day, we reserved a table for two in advance from Germany via internet. All was well, as it surely is a beautiful venue with great food. To top it all we met John Digweed there.

Late September 2005 we´re travelling with some friends and planned to take ten or eleven to the restaurant. We contacted them for a reservation via internet again and were bluntly told to send 20 Euros per person in ad- vance to a bank in Spain so the reservation could be taken!

This is obviously the most unfriendly, greedy reply I have ever had at any place when asking for a reservation for a substantial party. With starters in the 8-12 Euro range and main courses 16 Euros and beyond they could have had a fine turnover. But asking guests (at least we felt like being guests and not debtors) to shell out 200+ Euros in advance as a reservation deposit is so goddamn rude it turns guests away for ever.

We would have had no problem with leaving a credit card number, as it is common with classy restaurants all over the world. Food wise they are not par with a Blue Elephant or a Daitokai restaurant and both venues would never dare to bother their guests with such a deposit.

So if you fly to Ibiza make sure you spend your money at less spoiled and greedy places. There are plenty around that love to have your reservation taken, especially at the end of the season. You might even be welcomed with smile and not with a greedy gesture like this.