The bamboo branches in the window grew quite tall in their glass jars—no more crunchy leaves for a quick vitamin any longer. Well. Back to playing The Monorail Cat, I guess.

Museum lobby, Berlin. View large on black.

Counting the squares that I step on—everybody does—don’t ask me why.

Anyway.

The trick is to avoid the black ones and to keep away from the floor drain for as long as possible.

Although sooner or later you’ll have no choice—because The Big Bastard won’t allow you to step on the same square twice.

Writer working at Cafe Wintergarten in Literaturhaus, Berlin.

As a hopeless office inmate, I often fancy the idea of working in a public space—a nice café like Cafe Wintergarten at Literaturhaus¹ in Berlin—but I never actually try doing it. I wonder whether its mild noise of dishes and chatter would inspire or rather distract.

Moreover, I just learned that my preferred café in Bucharest, Crem Cafe Royale, has been acquired by a local restaurant chain and will be murdered in order to make room for another mediocre luncheonette with greasy spoons.

While passing by it, I’ll murmur —The price of progress!, and I’ll keep looking the other way.

¹ Right across the street from the Leica Store—even looking through its window inflicts serious damages to a bank account.

Beth Gibbons at Portishead live performance, Cristian ·Kit· Paul, Edinburgh, 2008.

The concert was heart wrenching beautiful—way beyond what my writing skills will ever allow me to express.

God, how could I possibly forgot that film—with all its grain and scanning pain—feels this fucking amazingly great?

Store window, Berlin, 2008.

Fleeing the country for the better part of the week seems like a golden idea since in Bucharest hysteria boils as the heavy security measures taken to protect the honchos participating in the 20th NATO Summit effectively paralyze the city and strongly interfere with its moving swarms of anxious inhabitants.

So for the weekend ich bin ein Berliner. Well, ein temporary Berliner, at least.

Don’t expect anything other than camera-phone photos because—after eight years—I carry a film camera, again. Analogue. There’s no better place to do this.

Tschüs Tschüß!

Please, give those architects some credit here—bringing people closer is a great, beautiful thing.

Economic growth gets really luxuriant—this country is clearly well managed and really blooming. Any day now—the blooms. Any day.

How to create a cool background texture in 3 easy steps

1. Find a river

A river or a lake on a windy day—water with small waves.

2. Find a building

A building reflecting in the river/lake, that is. More lines in the architecture, more intricate the texture. A sunny day helps.

3. Shoot the water

Shoot that building’s reflection in water. Play with the picture, change the colors, get crazy if you feel the urge.

Living the brand: proposed revision to Orange™ logo.

While playing with the pictures above (large on black here and here), I thought about writing something about the melding past and future, about time stretching like a grotesque accordion, freaking enormous and grossly out of tune.

Until I saw the glistering white tops. One in the painting and one in the picture. I stopped in bewilderment, trying to get my mind around this like when you bite off more than you can chew—choking, unable to move jaw, unable to spit all out.

I shot these pictures thousands of kilometers and a couple of years apart. Fucking long accordion!

The first received e-mail stored in my trusty (yet exceptionally ugly) Eudora archives dates back to 27 February 1997. That was (almost) 11 years ago.

My previous e-mails—from 1995 to 1997—are lost. Don’t worry, I had 11 years to get over it. Anyway; people, names, dates—having a BIG searchable archive proves to be very useful sometimes.

Internet. Just to put things in perspective: in 1997 Yahoo was still nursing its post-IPO hangover. Google was not incorporated yet. Hell, the internet domain google.com was still free! Yeah, I know.

Questions: How old is the oldest e-mail message stored on your computer? Do you intend to keep the mails you’ve got today until—say—2019, 11 years from now? Answer on your blogs.

Click to view large on black.

Remember: when in doubt, use this

Helvetica “Goat’s Milk + Salt” body scrub and other Helvetica products.

Found this in a Manga shop in Bangkok. I’m totally clueless, too.

On the other hand—you know those two holy sayings about it:

Nobody has ever been fired for choosing Helvetica.

and

When in doubt, use Helvetica.

So, all things considered, goat’s milk looks like a safe bet.

Prizzi spent her time examining her pedicure, critically scrutinizing her paws from every imaginable angle.