Grand Slam

And so one comes to a crossroad in life, and the Greasemonkey is no exception. Today, we stand at the crossroads. It was fun whilst it lasted, the WALAWALAMUCIWAWA. The future is uncertain for the Greasemonkey, as is his tenure in Wurstland. This marks a dark period in his life, but should he emerge from it all when the smoke clears, rest assured the Blog will continue. But for those who have faithfully followed this page during it's brief time "On Air", I thank you. It's been a blast. I sure hope I can make a come back when this week is over and when the dust has cleared, and I certainly look forward to it should I be able to.
Right now, I have put this all in God's hands.

Weekend

Above: Monika's Calorie Oasis.Lunch hang out of the Tap, Jackrabbit and XS.

Germany's elixir of life: The Jaegermeister.

With the weekend round the corner, the Tap, Jackrabbit and XS decided on a little fountain of youth elixir. Come the Jaegermeister....one shot wonder to perk up one's senses. Add a session of an XBOX (XIII) game....what you get is sheer mayhem....now I need to rush to the gents....

Got wheels, will travel.

Top: Post winter crustiness. Bottom: Pre Summer brand new tyres.

A sure sign of the summer approaching - The gas stations have a queue that snakes into the streets. Everyone wants a piece of the sunshine action, cruising down the streets with their rag top down. Over here, that means everything in excess of 200 km/h, on Deutschland's Autobahn, no less. Now where did I put my Diesel synthetic motor oil (yes, we're talking about my trusty steed for as long as I can remember during my time here, 2.0 litre Opel Vectra Stationwagon).....?

The Tap Strikes Back

"WHY DID THE GOAL KEEPER NOT CATCH THE BALL??!!!" whines The Jackrabbit....
That's called a GOAL you wabbit.
"I don't care...I want a rematch." he demands.
The Tap gladly accepts....
"Can the Germans repeat the feat? They have done it with 10 men..." he quotes....
1-0, for Germany against France...
Well, whatever the outcome...if the Jackrabbit so much as whines again we'll have him roasted.

Winning Eleven...

Left, The Jackrabbit, right, The Tap.

It is evident that The Jackrabbit can't keep still. He's doing another of his irritating I'm-winning-but-will-whine-like-I'm-not.
The Tap and I can't wait to get a hammer to pound him into the prairies out there once they are done with this Konami offering.

Along the Autobahn along the Rhine region.

On a less morbid note, it was nice after a hectic week to have a brief respite along the Rhine River. The Autobahn....Deutschland's last bastion of freedom where one can pummel insects on their windscreens in reckless abandon, something to the tune of over 200 km/h...

Consider this...

You sit in front of your spanking new 19 inch LCD monitor. You decide to get comfortable, so you prop your chin on your palm, and gaze into a wonder of modern technology - no flickers, no cathode rays blasting into your poor eyes, irradiating your poor face with enough energy to make it glow in the dark.
"Say....," a voice calls out from behind "what's so interesting about the Windows XP screen saver? Why are you staring at it for so long."
You face almost slips off your palm and you are jolted back to reality, conscious and embarassing reality that is...
A lack of sleep sure can do strange things to you (such as screen saver appreciation sessions), but it somehow causes one to be more prolific as well when it comes to quoting such instances...

Slightly out of focus?

Well, not exactly Robert Capa's book, I am just misty eyed from their April 20th press release. It's nice to see Nikon's D-SLR selection expanding, especially in the lens department.

It's also pleasant to experience the wonders of firmware upgrades with regards to the Nikon D70. With the release of the D70S, owners of the D70 can benefit from the improvements of the D70S save the larger LCD screen, thanks to a firmware update that will be available come May 2005. I hope this bids well for their future releases as well, maintaining what made the Nikon F mount such a hit with Nikon owners. But I am also glad that they do offer these SLRs in black livery instead of just the hideos plastic silver finishes...

The previews here and news here, definitely started the morning with a little bit of a buzz. But for now, the only clicks I'll hear are those of my mouse and keyboard hammering away trying to finish up some mad report and presentation. Smells like student life doesn't it?

Cow gazing...

It's about sleepy cows int the morning. It's been a 16 hour work day yesterday, and 4.5 hours later I am back to the grindstone. This morning was an autopilot mode....junction-right, filter lane-stop, watch-out-speed limit...maybe to early for the traffic police here...but one never knews when they decide to pull a fast one. After all, they aren't on a coffee and doughnuts diet here.
It was so early as I drove past some farm steads that the cows were still sleeping. And it REALLY struck me how early I was when I passed another farmstead and the cows AND sheep started getting up, steadying themselves for another round of grazing. Am seriously wondering how I am to make it through today. Ohhh-Kay.....time to MOooooooooo-ve out.

Add salt

The morning's fantasy about having Dim Sum in the land of Wurst wasn't unfounded. Nonetheless, it's late (9:13pm) and I still haven't had my dinner...it's one of those late nights that normally end up with dinner at the Golden Arches at 12 am in the morning. (but I must admit, their recent €1 offerings have been pretty attractive)
Lucky me though, my kind colleagues have decided to get out there and raid a Vietnamese restaurant, so I don't have to resign to a fate more depressing than having to down a heap of super processed meat patties and artificial sweetener sauce.
I reckon I'd tuck in into some Mc European-Asian cuisine. Ladies and gentlement, please welcome Reis gebraten mit Hühnerfleisch und Gemüse, packed in Sara-Lee like take away aluminium trays with a silver-foiled cardboard cover. I only have to contend to extremely high doses of Monosodiumglutamate...that wonder drug next to Tri-methylxanthine.

Lunch break

Of late, I've been missing out on some of the finer things in life....and whilst Schweineschnitzels, Sauerbratens, Schweinshaxes and Gulasches (pardon the anglicising...) do offer a brutally generous amount of protein, nothing quite delivers in a way that Dim Sum can.
Top that off with some Pai Guat, chilli and hot tea, and the strangeness of April's unpredictable weather appears a lot more bearable. Today's menu includes sweet and sour pork. Guten.

White crystals...

It ain't a rock on the lady's finger for sure, but it is every bit Trimethylxanthine. It's got a half life of 6 hours in your body, and it's something that is more pervasive in our society, and certainly specific ones round the world as well than we realise. Probably the only thing that you can get on the streets without being arrested, staked-out, run to the ground, or locked down. It's lunch now, and I think I will go explore once more the wonders of this Trimethyl-whatever.

The Positive K

Meet the Positive K (K+). One of the key influences of The Random XS (TRXS) as far as "pottery" and metal work collections are concerned. K+ can be credited to a fait accompli of playing a key role in the turning point in the life of XS. A man of a few words, what he trims on in speech, he more than makes up for in thought and deed. Respect to K+ and the life he lives. It's been a fab 10 years since the Checkpoint Echo crisis. Here's to more good years.

Fly bye.

And so we bid farewell to our dipteran friends who have come to the end of their earthly visit. No more mad strafing runs round my coffee mug with crusted milk foam from yesterday. No more cushioned impacts with the luscious sofas of rotting banana skins. We bid them rest in peace (hopefully not pieces should they have been the unfortunate victims of the ubiquitous rubber band - or a fate far worse, having to go down that slippery path of some sticky-long-tongued predator's digestive tract). Ah, all this mourning early in the morning.

Perhaps it'd be better I turn my attention to the duck that was trying to cross the road this morning as I approached a small town-honest...it waited....and waited...for the traffic to go by...looking intently for an opportunity not to become an intergral part of the road. It's a clever duck I'd say....sure beats flying around when the hunting season is near.

In hindsight (hmm...."hindsight"...right), it's a tad bit macabre cruising down the local highways early in the morning trying to figure out the poor creatures that had fallen victim to last night's overzealous drivers...

Camel talk

I've been here since 6 plus in the morning...the difference being that in Summer (or Spring at least), it remains bright before and after work, anytime before that, it's plain depressing to be confined to being a nocturnal creature. I've been thinking...that if Maslow was right about his hierarchy of needs...then I'd be in pretty bad shape. Whilst most physiological needs have been met (if you consider coffee a decent substitute for water), it appears that lunch is not on the cards. Most workaholics will contend that "it's normal". But not when I have been told that I was supposed to wait upon somebody for lunch...then be told...no, worse, to FIND OUT eons (two hours actually since I was busy) that it was not to be so. My usual lunch spot closed by then, and I was livid. Wouldn't you be? History repeats itself...and I would be eager to see what happens today...as my lunch buddy has once again "promised" that lunch will take place. I am tempted to turn into a camel with three humps at the moment...yes...that'd sure look a lot more appealing than a spare tyre. Come to think of it...a camel ain't that bad an idea, consider the following:

• An adult camel weighs between 700 and 1,500 pounds (318 to 680 kg) and is up to 7 feet (2.1 meters) tall.
• Camels can live to be up to 50 years old.
• Camels gestate about 11 months and give birth to one calf.
• A male reaches maturity in five years, a female in three to four years.
• Camels actually have three eyelids! Two of them have lashes, and the third is thin.
  A camel can close its nostrils.
• A camel, like a goat, will eat almost anything.
• Pack camels can carry loads of 400 pounds 25 miles (181 kg 40 km) in a day.

Alas, I digress...time to do more data analysis.

The problem with milk and bananas...

...is this:

Fly. Boy left, Girl right.
On any other occasion, it would have been OK. In fact, it is the only thing that is OK about Winter - It decimates all those insects that threaten to splat your windscreen or kamikaze into your nostrils as you cruise down those dirt tracks in your latest alloy-framed-Hawaiian-island-named mountain bike. But no. Spring is here, and as the ambient temperature warms up, so does the Drosophila melanogaster, better known as the common fruit fly warm itself up to whatever that you plan to have for lunch, snack etc.
Since morning, I have been harassed by this relentless creature which is accredited for the sacrifices its species made so that our present day understanding of genetics and heredity is what it is. It has been doing strafing runs across my desk as it laps up traces of milk stains left on my half hour old Caffe Latte and banana skin from lunch. I am tempted to assemble an anti-fly battery of swats to take these little rascals out with all the precision that a fly swat could bear- but for what they have already contributed to Mankind...I reckon I'd give that a "miss".

Hand-rodynamic

Ever recall that instant where you are cruising along a seemingly endless, meandering road, with the windows down so you can smell and taste the air through which you ride, and then all of a sudden, you decide to form your hand into some sort of an imaginary aircraft
You fix your eyes on your palm, then stick you hand out into the wind and watch your palm react to each tilt and twist of your wrist as it ploughs into the approaching wind? You tilt up, and your whole arm seems to follow, tilt down and you feel you'd almost touch the ground. And it goes on for the longest time...and it fascinates you doesn't it? Our old friend from Basel, Herr Bernoulli comes to mind...

Triumphant

A while ago, The Greasemonkey witnessed a supposed derring-do between Lady M and the Tap. The wager "Do a 21 km half marathon or do a 400 km drive-athon to a little village off the Rhine river." And so, 2 weeks and 2 hours 23 minutes later, Lady M blazes past the finishing line to garner the crown of the most daring raid ever into a sumptuous buffet treat.
The Tap claims he is devastated, and how not to be so? He was so sure Lady M was going to collapse at the start line...."They may change the route, they may change the venue, but they ain't gonna change the fact that Lady M will NEVER finish the race!" he claimed.
Lady M stood the test of time, and triumphed against insurmountable odds (read: high carbo diet). A sumptuous Canton' buffet awaits, or is it going to be a Korean Buffet restaurant by the side of a famous composer's house (where The Tap once again exercised his "Oh...how am I going to attract the attention of the waitress" antics). Incidentally, that was where the image of "The Wager Is Set" was taken, where Lady M put her foot down.
And what about The Jackrabbit? Well, he watches in amusement, as he plays the role of his own boss today, roving the streets of a little city with a restaurant called Monika's Cholesterol Oasis.

Dragon Cliffs

Few know The Tap as the contemplative sort. But it was clear, as he perched atop the legendary Dragon rocks, that he was musing over something MORE than just geography alone. This shot, taken by the ever sneaky Jackrabbit (in HALO2....this would be his favorite view as he homes in for a bludgeoning of the poor unsuspecting victim) illustrates the point. Peering over the top of the crag, the Tap who is now another year older on this planet looks into the future, and thoughts of a former life....far and away linger in his mind.

Life at large

Stiff necks are a pain. You wake up in the morning and as you do the morning "The Thinker" followed by a Royal Flush, you feel that nauseating "click" down your neck...and you know you've had it. It's no fun when you are driving around like Robocop, and in a town where bicycles are the students' most popular mode of transport, you have to make sure you look BEHIND you, and it turns out that THAT side of your neck is stiff...and so you shift your ENTIRE body in the direction you are looking, and appear like an idiot in the car. So this is probably how Trolls, Gnomes and all creatures with a thick neck feel like...or at least how I'd imagine them to feel beneath that hide.

Next in line

"Next" in line in the Nikon Digital SLR series. The D70s has been "announced", as stated here. It comes with USB2.0, AND and option for a vertical grip battery pack. Now assuming that the D70s does come to fruition, just WHAT in the world were they thinking when they decided that the D70 would have none of the aforementioned. And what is the D50 doing in that hideous looking silver???!!! It looks like someone sledgehammered a Canon Pro S1's chasis cap onto a D70 body. Well, time will tell.

Beauty from Pain

"Art is merely bleeding on the page. Most of my work comes from taking conversations and journals from everyone and making them fit into a song. It's one thing to tell someone that they have something to live for. It's another to let them see that you've been there yourself—lost, without hope—and found a way back."
Max Hsu, Superchic[k] keyboardist, DJ, producer and primary songwriter.

Out now.

Consider this

Which is worse? To live up to other's expectations and cease to be yourself, or to live as who you really are, and be yourself? Points to ponder amidst the breakneck pace we live in.