Lyceum Theatre - 145 W 45th St.

The ultimate in self-referential theater: a musical which is its own "the making of..." documentary. Full of obscure musical theater references, judging from the number of times the audience burst into laughter by the sheer mentioning of a name - which I obviously had never heard before.

4 People on stage, including the writer and composer, playing themselves, a bare set with 4 chairs, a guy with an electric piano (who is also allowed to talk, side-stepping usual theater union restrictions) certainly make for the most spartan musical production on Broadway I have ever heard of. The premise of the show is how Musical geeks Jeff and Hunter want to write a new original musical for a competition in 3 weeks and in lack of a better idea simply start documenting the process of developing the yet unnamed musical - a process which goes beyond the festival, an off-broadway run in 2006 to the broadway appearance right now.

Some of the strongest moments of the productions are its credible honesty at providing glimpses into the soul of struggling artist and what would drive presumably sane people to embark on such a wild stubbornly persistent chase after their dream.

316 W 49th St.

The quintessential tourist and pre-theater dinner in the theater district all-you-can-eat-meat place.

123 W56th St (6/7th avenue) - Swiss/French

From the party the week before, we had learned that this place has a special of Fondue Chinoise on Sundays, which makes for a nice ritual on a slow day by boiling thin slices of meat in broth at the table and eat it with all kinds of dips, sauces and other little snacks.

Richard Florida

Another one of the autographed copies from the Author's@Google series, which I finally got around to read - even though the 1h talk did sum up the punchiest key points quite nicely and the book didn't add much additional insight. Richard Florida, part show-man, part social scientist throws a lot of data and and sprawling network of collaborations behind the idea that place matters. It seems to affect our economic potential, whom we might spend our live with and even our psychological happiness. Despite our post-industrial economy being less and less defendant on any physical resources, people increasingly cluster by themselves into cities and regions, economic activity and innovation even more so. If the world is really flat, this doesn't seem to make sense... The strongest argument seems to be the correlation between economic success, innovation and the clustering of certain personality types - leading to superstar cities, which attract increasing number of highly innovative and successful people until the reach a level of shear inevitability in certain sectors (technology in Silicon Valley, Finance, Fashion in New York, politics and public affairs in Washington D.C. etc.). The tongue in cheek "gay and bohemian index" seems to work as a measure of real-estate appreciation, not particularly because those people contribute disproportionately to any of the economic benchmarks, but because they are the canaries of urban development whose presence indicates a climate which is likely to attract the kind of people who on average are more innovative and thus have a disproportionate impact on economic activity in an economy which largely runs on intangible concepts and innovation.

As somebody who pays ridiculous rent and accept all kinds of inconveniences to live in New York City, I am obviously conditioned to believe most of what Mr. Florida has to say and in fact happy to get some outside validation that I am not completely nuts. Besides it's key arguments, the book presents the results of some massive multi-factorial analysis which is supposed to show which kinds of places should appeal to what kind of people. Many non-intuitive names are on those lists (Trenton, NJ - WTF...?!?), without any attempts to illustrate or attempt which factors might have pushed them there. I guess after all, I'll have to read Jane Jacob's for some deeper insight into why certain places might feel "right" and others just don't, despite all the efforts.

Pixar's latest full length computer animation movie is a love story about 2 robots. Largely silent other for some tweets and chirps (think R2-D2), the story relies mostly on gestures and "facial expressions" of the smartly anthropomorphized robots to the tell the story - resulting in some surprising stylistic flashbacks to the silent film era, all the way to German Expressionism... Stepping up to the challenge of making a beat-up hunk of metal appear cute, cuddly and endearing raises the suspicion that the animation team at Pixar has run out of any other easier challenges to show off their talent.

230 Fifth Avenue

The 20th floor penthouse and rooftop is a large bar/lounge which was used for this years party around August 1st. Not as public as previous year's events on the Hudson river pier, the crowed was still almost too large for the rooftop. For me this is usually an opportunity to eat all the unhealthy stuff for which Swiss cuisine is known, like raclette or grilled sausages.

We are about 4 weeks away from the due-date (August 15th) and are more or less finished with preparing what we call our "nursery wall". Given that we live in 1 bedroom apartment, that is all which we can dedicate to the yet unborn child. However, I suspect than in terms of sqft/lb, he or she is still getting the best deal in the family...




Finding compact and functional baby furniture was actually quite hard. For some reason most nursery furniture seems to be inspired by soviet era tank design - I guess appropriate if a whole room needs to be filled up. The oval crib from Stokke - setup here as bassinet - was despite being rather expensive pretty much the only choice we found that would somewhat fit our space budget. Besides it is quite adorable, with its styling where Scandinavian modern meets Victorian kitsch.

Since the sex of the baby is not known yet, the color scheme - including gifts at the baby-shower - naturally tended towards green, yellow, brown and other earth tones. Which I guess is nice since it prevents the poor child from being gender-stereotyped from day one.

Today is a nice sunny and windy summer day and we decide on a whim to see if we can do a little sailing trip on the Hudson and NY harbor from Chelsea piers. We end up on the "Imagine", like the Adirondack (below) a replica of a 80ft pilot schooner. The prototypical inshore racers, Pilot schooners are among the fastest working sailboats ever built, since they stayed close to the shore and since part of their function was to race out to every incoming sailing vessel entering the harbor to offer the services of the harbor pilots before the competition got there. (In fact the "America" the first winner of the America's Cup, was based on the design of NY harbor pilot schooners).

Today, the wind was clearly strong enough for some fast sailing - even without the outer jib and a reefed main.

323 Third Avenue

We usually don't go that for over to the eastside - even we now live in the same zipcode as this restaurant. For some reason we went there because of a mention in TONY for a place to eat fish and its simple/informal setting. Once we got there, it was pretty crowded and we waited for about 45 min for a table in the bar, which by that time wasn't as crowded and noisy any more as when we arrived. Food was ok, but without too much fish on the menu and after waiting for that long it's hard to be impressed. At least we got some appetizers on the house with an apology making us wait that long. I guess it must be because my wife is 8 months pregnant, because otherwise hostesses in oh-we-are-so-incredibly-trendy-right-now restaurants usually don't have much more than a condescending look to spare for people who dare to show up without reservations - but it's nice to know that they are capable of human emotions after all...

Alexander Roy

The first of the signed book copies from the Google NYC author series which I actually read, since it is a very quick read and outrageously sinful and crazy in its premise that it is hard to pass up. The somewhat hard to believe cover story for the book is a 4-5 year long obsession by the author to find "The Driver" after some vague remarks his father had made on his deathbed. If we shall believe this part of the story, it is up to psychoanalysts to determine what drove the author to turn his fathers youthful dreams (which he reasonably abandoned) into his own endeavor as pointless as it is reckless? Maybe there is some of the same "finish your fathers unfinished business" at work as the one which might have led to the invasion and occupation of Iraq in another famous father/son relationship? Fortunately, the authors unreasonable obsession did not end as disastrously.

The driver is a mythical and probably non-exsting organizer of follow-on competitions to the crazy cross-country road races of the 60ies and 70ies and the author signs up for a few long-distance road-rallies to hopefully find this guy or get on his radar. While these road-rallies mainly seem to be collective road-trips and parties for rich playboys and their expensive cars, there seem to be a group of people who take it more seriously and somewhat implicitly race against each other.

The driver never shows up, but instead does a film-maker working on a documentary about the holders of the current cross-country "land-speed-record" from ca. 1983 during one of the last such underground races. After having gained some experience in the art of underground long-distance driving - being fuel efficient and consistent to keep the average speed high, being watchful and inconspicuous to avoid being stopped by the police - the author attempts to break this record in a solo run and does so sometime in 2006.

Interestingly the author seems to be very concerned about emphasizing his nearly scientific approach and obsessive preparation to underground long-distance driving. It is pretty clear that he is basically aware that what he does is pretty stupid and dangerous - something which no degree of rationalization can cover up. In the book he has to come close to even admitting that the reason why they broke the record may not have been as much in his scientific approach, but his co-drivers instinct driven approach to simply floor the pedal and drive as hard as the circumstances allow. Maybe in the end it was a combination of the two approaches - which still doesn't make it any safer or more reasonable.

The return trip by high-speed, shuttle and train back to New York on the end of the busy 4th of July week-end. While the schedule includes a 2.5h layover at the Kingston, R.I. train-stationg (in the middle of nowhere), Amtrak managed to get another 50min delay on the 1h trip from Boston on a completely empty track, without snowstorm or other bad weather. How they managed to do that remains a mystery.

Vineyard Haven, MV

Since the previous days had been nice and windy, we were planing on a day-trip on a sailboat. However, we picked the lousiest day of the week with practically no wind, low visibility and increasing rain as the day goes on. We still took the bus to Vineyard Haven, not to be the ones to chicken out or hoping the weather would improve. Well, it didn't so the trip got cancelled. As we were sitting on the wharf, the schooner Shenandoah was towed slowly into port, since it has no engine and here was no wind. She had been out all week with a group of school-children, which certainly must have been a great experience.

Edgartown, MV

The 4th of July parade and firework on the Island is in Edgartown - in typical small town fashion.

For our anniversary dinner and some sight-seeing, we take the bus a couple of miles over to Edgartown, which is one of the posh parts of the island. Like the Nantucket, described in Moby Dick, Edgartown was a major whaling port and many of the stately mansions where build by whaling captains.

Martha's Vineyard

For our 1st anniversary and quite likely last vacation in a while, we are going to Martha's Vineyard, staying at a romantic victorian area B&B in Oak bluffs. Neither of us had ever been to Martha's Vineyard which is famous as a vacation spot or summer home for the rich and famous as well as members of the New England upper class.

Oak Bluffs, which is supposedly the party town on the island, grew out of a Methodist campground and retreat (similarly to Ocean Grove, NJ), with the tents over time replaced by small (and not so small any more) wooden structures during the course of the 18th century.





The rest of the town around the campground was built by a private developer as victorian seaside resort. It also seems that Martha's Vineyard had been for long a destination for the African American middle-class around the Boston - New York area - writers, musicians, painters, doctors, lawyers, bankers, business owners, etc. In particular Oak Bluffs still seems to be a major destination for ivy-league educated, wealthy African-American families, going about their lives with the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie and the greatest degree of normalcy. The kind of place where the Obamas would fit right in. In their own snobbish way, the New England bourgeoisie seems to be more color-blind than the rest of the country, since in their value systems legacy trumps everything else: if your parents had been members, you are automatically part of the in-crowd... In a way it is sad that this should still be curious or noteworthy, on the other hand this might be a glimpse of how a post racial society would look, where even African Americans have the right to live the same kind of comfortable and stuffy middle-class life, which aspiring to, every other ethnic group in this country is taking for granted - without the feeling of betraying some greater socio-political cause.

Berkeley, CA

An eclectic wedding party at a restaurant in downtown Berkeley. The wedding ceremony is performed by a friend of the couple - taking advantage of the broad terms of religious freedom in the US, where executing a religious office is merely a matter of self-declaration.

1600 Amphitheater Parkway, Mountain View, CA

After all the hype in the press seeing the mythical headquarter of Google in Silicon Valley is a bit underwhelming. I guess so far, Google has so successfully resisted the common edifice complex, to build a palatial headquarter matching the status of its current market valuation.

The sprawling campus in a remote corner of Mountain View seems cobbled together from a number of buildings with inconsistent office-park architecture. Each is surrounded with its own parking lot and landscaping which means that traveling between them requires passing over public streets and traveling quite a distance. For that purpose Google has a large number of public bicycles outside each building, which can be used for getting around. Thanks to the flat landscape, the favorable climate and available showers and changing rooms, many employees seem to commute by bike and have their own bikes to get around. Despite that, video conferencing within the campus is quite popular.

My first trip to headquarters since joining Google a few months ago and the first trip to the SF Bay Area in a while, which is always a good way to catch up with old friends.

643 Hudson St. - Malaysian

After weathering a thunderstorm in the middle of the west-village on our way from St. Vincent's, we find the understated hole in the wall at the edge of the meatpacking district. An inventive menu with small plates for sharing, some of which we liked very much some of which not so much.

Another visit to the MOMA after a long time, with some friend from out of town, who happens to work for a company with corporate membership. The most spectacular of the special exhibitions currently is "Take your time" a set of immersive installations playing with light and space.

67th St & CPW

It's a nice evening for having dinner in Central Park, specially for a special occasion. Quite a bit larger and more touristy than I imagined.

We are flying back from ABQ to LAS with Southwest Airlines and from there with Jet Blue to JFK. Because of the change of airlines, we include a generous layover in Las Vegas, which is enough time to get out of the airport and have lunch at the Luxor, which we had not seen yet in our previous tour of the casinos on the strip.

From Albuquerque, we take a day trip to Santa Fe which has a cute downtown with mostly art galleries and shops selling south-western inspired things.

We take the arial tramway/cablecar up to the top of the Sandia mountains above Albuquerque. At 3000m over sea level, the air is pretty thin for somebody living basically at sea level and Albuquerque itself with 2000m is higher than Denver.

We get up very early in the morning to go to the airport to catch a flight to Albuquerque, where we are visiting family for the rest of the trip.

On the second day, we take a tour out to Hoover Dam, where we also drive through some of the surroundings of Las Vegas as well as through Boulder City. The dam was built during the great depression as a project for water management for the states surrounding the colorado river all the way down to Mexico. Like other depression area projects, it was completed ahead of schedule and under budget - but not without significant loss of life.

For three nights in Las Vegas, we are staying at the Palazzo Casino & Resort, the latest and greatest luxury hotel on the strip with rooms (sorry - guest suites...) larger than our apartment in New York. Since I had been here in 1997, Vegas has changed quite a bit. At most resorts, there is now more space dedicated to the shopping mall than to the casino and the clinking of coins from the slot-machines has been replaced by the discreet swish of a optically readable paper ticket being printed out with all the winnings. Since we are both not too much into gambling, we check out the casino architecture on the first day.

For the first night in Las Vegas, we go to the Bellagio see "O" - or eau for the French-Canadians. This very impressive spectacle by Cirque du Soleil, which plays on a very elaborate custom stage with a 25ft deep reconfigurable pool, adding synchronous swimming and platform diving to the usual repertoire of acrobatics - also performed for added difficulty while being soaking wet from getting in and out of the water.

We are leaving JFK on an evening flight with Jet Blue to Las Vegas for our last long distance trip before the baby is born.

Mike Daisey @ Joe's Pub - Public Theater 250 Lafayette St.

A monolog/solo performance at the intimate cafe performance space in the public theater building. Part auto-biography, part rant on the state of theater in the american provinces, the evening is witty and thought provoking. Mike Daisey describes the current state of regional theater as a network of buildings and institutions which put on production with a tailorist mentality of industrial planing, instead of looking at theater as the people who create the experience on stage. We may all speculate about the reasons, but it seems clear that theater audiences are shrinking and getting demographically older. Wether that is an unavoidable and irreversible phenomenon with wider cultural roots remains to be seen.

Susan Gregory Thomas

An investigative report on the consumer industry's latest target market: 0-3. The author identifies a Whitehouse conference on early childhood development and learning in 1997 as a turning point in the development of this market. While the original intention seems to have been to point out the damaging consequence of neglect during those early years, many parents seems to have interpreted the emphasis on 0-3 as an occasion to attempt to "fast-tracking" their child through its natural development stages. Indie-sensations like the Baby-Einstein video tapes series (now owned by Disney) showed the media industry that there was a legitimate way to target the 0-3 market, which until then had been somewhat taboo: it was ok, as long as it was "educational".

The research backing behind the "scientific" labels media and toy companies use on their products is rather spotty at this time. Doing research studies with babies is still considered rather unethical and babies don't fill out sociologists survey questionnaires very well. From whatever scientific research on the topic there is, it seems that while babies very effectively learn from the interaction with humans, they do not benefit much from audio-visual learning support. Possibly because at that age, they seem to be incapable of abstraction or drawing analogies - a TV is simply a box that emits sounds and rapidly blinking lights and not a projection or model of something which might have relevance in the real world.

The only things which pre-schoolers seem to be able to do - starting at about 2 years - is to recognize characters - specially if they have big soft features, big round eyes and primary colors. After repeat exposure, they will happily recognize and them out on any cereal box or other product conveniently placed at eye level in the supermarket.

As for younger children, is not very clear what babies actually experience when they clearly transfixed and fascinated by watching TV - some scientist think it might be like a continuous mild seizure as the brain is overstimulated with audio-visual signals and tries to situate itself in a current context - similar to being continuously surprised or startled. Some studies suspect a link between early TV exposure to ADD or as a trigger for autism. Being on the side of caution, the American Pediatric Association recommends not TV watching for children under 2 years old.

Since marketing to children always implies marketing to parents as well, the book also goes into how marketeers view and segment the current generation of parents: Generation X being the first one largely reared on daycare and TV is supposed to rebel against the openly egoistic and materialistic outlook of their yuppie baby boomer parents and thus presents a bit of a challenge to peddlers of consumerist wares. But nothing that a few sociology and psychology PhD working for the advertising industry couldn't overcome. The Achilles heel of Gen X parents is their life-long emergence in consumer culture and the nostalgia for the brands and media properties of their childhood - which would explain why no comic book or TV series from the 70ies or 80is is too cheezy to be re-issued as big-budget movies (Underdog the movie, anyone?). Gen X parents are into attachment parenting and only want the best for their children - thus an "educational" message paired with the brand familiarity and nostalgia factor appears to be the winning strategy for marketers.

A side effect of the consolidation of the media industry into about 5 conglomerates for the English language market is the disappearance of independent authors and publishers of children's books. Instead of artistic diversity, what dominates the market today are low-cost production re-hashes of the same prime media-properties, licensed by the large media companies. In addition, the day care industry - among the most cash-strapped - is more than happy to receive additional "educational" material based on the same licensed characters for free or a very reasonable cost. Marketers are very conscious of the value of brand loyalty and with children growing up ever the quicker into consumers, brand awareness and loyalty has to be acquired ever the earlier - which they seem to be achieving quite successfully, but not necessarily to the benefit of parents and children at whom the whole wave of branded "educational" media material is targeted.

Journal Square, Jersey City

As a corporate off-site event, we go to Jersey City to watch Blade Runner and Brazil at the Loew's Jersey Theater, which is currently being restored and operated by a non-profit foundation. Originally built in 1929 as one of 5 grand movie palaces in the NY metro area, this is a truly impressive movie theater. Very large with over 3000 seats and impressive baroque revival decor all made out of painted plaster it is a reminder of times when going to the movies was a major event and possibly the only form of entertainment available to a large part of the population.

The other impressive feature of the theater is a large-scale theater organ - also being painstakingly restored into working order. Originally designed as a cost-cutting measure to replace a full orchestra with a single person to provide the sound-track to silent movies using the only technology available at the time to fill a space that big: pipe organs. In additions to organ pipes these theater organs have all kinds of bells and whistles to imitate the timbres of other instruments as well as provide all kinds of sound effects in a purely electro-mechnical way.

Spirit Cruises

A lunch cruise with the Infrastructure engineering team at Google NYC. We are very lucky with the wether - picking the only nice day from a series of rainy and cold ones. The only sad part is that the food would have been better at the office.

Given how scarce and expensive living space is in New York City, most New Yorkers share an exceptional obsession with Real Estate. Given how utterly unaffordable any even somewhat nice or spacious place has become, there is ample opportunity for senseless lusting over pictures in the NY Times real-estate section or in the windows of Brokerage offices.

The next level of pornography is to go to open-houses for apartments you know you can't afford - which at this point is pretty much anything. We are not pushing the curve too much and try to see if it could be possible to find a 2BR in Manhattan which we maybe could afford, if we recklessly over-extend ourselves financially.

For example, we learn that the reason why apartments in Battery Park City are somewhat cheaper per sqft is that the entire complex is on a land lease which leads to a monthly tax and maintenance fee on top of any mortgage payment, which is higher than what most people would be willing to pay for housing. Or that 19th century 10ft wide tenements can be converted into luxury apartments, with bedroom to small to fall down without hitting the head at the opposite wall but kitchens full of exotic German made hardware.

The conclusion of all this is that even though it is becoming popular again to have a family and still live in the city, this is the exclusive privilege of those who do not rely primarily on a salary for their likelihood. Gentrification has reached a level where the employed middle classes (without huge bonus or ownership in a flourishing business) are pretty much forced to live outside the city center - not because they can as during the urban flight of the 60ies - but because that is now the only pace which is barely affordable enough.

Carnegie Hall

We went to a Saturday afternoon family concert at Carnegie Hall with the Orchestra of St. Luke's with the theme of "Symphony in Space. $10 tickets for orchestra seats sounded like quite a deal for a world class orchestra at Carnegie Hall, besides it was a good way to see what people with kids do for fun around here.

The program included excerpts from works with a more or less direct connection to space with some explanations from the conductor. During some of the pieces, NASA imagery from various planetary missions was projected on the back of the stage.

The program included:

* Opening of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (Richard Strauss), famous from the earth-rise scene in "2001: A Space Odyssey"
* Jupiter from "The Planets" (Gustav Holst)
* Finale from Symphony No. 41 "Jupiter" (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)
* Excerpts from the Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 (Johann Sebastian Bach), which supposedly is included in the series of artifacts carried on board of the Voyager I space probe
* Variations on the nursery song "Twinkle, Twinkle little Star"
* Arrangement from the sound-track of "Star Trek" TV shows and movies
* Finale from Symphony No. 9, "From the New World" (Antonin Dvorák), which had been the one personal item which Neil Armstrong had taken with him on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon
* Mars from "The Planets" (Gustav Holst)
* As an encore, excerpts from the score of the "Star War's" Movie trilogy.

The Down Town Association

A black tie ball in the in the home of a venerable old-shool gentlemen's club in downtown manhattan as a fundraising event for the NY harbor foundation. The party is spread over various rooms on 4 floors of the building with different music, themes and alcohol sponsors in each. But one of the main attractions is the building, which is the kind of place where us mere mortals (non members) don't get to hang out on a regular basis.

Zankel Hall @ Carnegie Hall

An evening of baroque chamber-music from Vivaldi to Bach at the smaller new Zakel Hall concert space underneath Carnegie Hall.

VIVALDI Concerto for Strings and Continuo in G Minor, RV 152
MARCELLO Oboe Concerto in D Minor (with ornaments by J. S. Bach)
GRAUN Concerto for Viola da Gamba, Strings, and Basso Continuo in A Minor
P. H. ERLEBACH Overture No. 5 in F Major
BACH Concerto for Harpsichord and Orchestra in D Minor, BWV 1052

45 Bleeker

Three short plays by Ethan Coen, best know for edgy movies and winning 3 oscars in one night. His Off-Broadway stage debut was produced by the Atlantic Theater with a stellar cast, but we somehow missed it (was fully sold out anyway...) but is now coming back for another run at the 45 Bleeker Theater. The three pays are basically light sketches about heavy topics, like death or god - treated an irreverent way typical to comedy. Funny and entertaining, but not earth shattering and without all the celebrity and talent associated without the production, would probably have gone without being much noticed.

22 East 21st St - Chinese

Another exploration towards the new eastern frontier. The italian bistro at the corner is too crowded at 9pm (30min wait) so we continue along 21st street. This is the next door door down and practically empty (typically not a very good sign). The decor is a lot more elaborate than the typical Chinese restaurant, but the food is ok and not that exceptional.

30 W 22nd - New American

As we explore the new neighborhood towards the east, we come past this lounge/restaurant along 22nd street. The decor is a very high-concept take on an apres-ski lodge, with wood paneled walls, glass deer-heads hanging over the bar and birch branches stuck in the flower-beds outside the courtyard windows. The music is a bit too loud for the dining room, but the food and atmosphere were otherwise quite interesting, so we might be back there some other time, since its just around the corner.

Paul Fussell

Americans don't tend to think of themselves as class society, but recent research seemed to show that there is less social mobility between generations in the US today than even in aristocratic old Europe. At first glance the American class system is largely about money, but not quite. According to this book, there are many defining or at least telling signs of class, like education, culture, security, values, habits, dress or speak.

By and large, American society is defined by the bourgeoisie or middle class, which has swept the old landed aristocracy from power at about the time of industrialization. And the United States being born in this period is clearly a country of bourgeois ideals: values of hard work, success, personal improvement, achievement are an implicit part of the social contract.

However, even in the US there is an upper class, but not very visible since "we", the dominant middle class don't really understand them (and vice versa). They are born rich into a life of leisure and even though they may have heard that some people need to work to earn a living, they cannot relate to the idea from experience. Thus to be upper class - or "old money" as it is called in America, on has to be born rich in the second or third generation at least in order to not be exposed to any more to such middle class values like the virtue of hard work.

Some of the richest people today have amassed their fortune as part of their professional career, which makes them upper-middle class at best. Class also has to do with security or the freedom to choose ones own destiny - not having any bosses or other socio-economic pressures dictating what to do. According to this book, the middle class is the most insecure about its position, sandwiched between the working class and the upper class. Feeling the need to constantly prove and establish themselves, they are very aware of status and the wealthy middle class is the quintessential consumer for any kind of perceived status symbols. The upper class does not feel the need to prove themselves, since they know their place and they don't really understand the so very middle class idea of self improvement anyway. In some sense, they are not that different from the aristocracy of the feudal age.

Today we tried out my new zipcar account for a family visit in New Jersey. I had always liked the concept but after reading very bad reviews from users in NY. In summary: don't even dream of being able to get any car for the week-end and should you ever score one, it will be filthy and break down after a few miles. Besides the insurance coverage is really ridiculous compared to the cost of anything you might collide with in the streets of New York.

Since then, Zipcar seems to have raised its insurance coverage to reasonable levels (300k basic liability) and I could sign up through work without paying signup and yearly fees.

Since parking in the building is so expensive, taking in the car for 3 nights is more expensive than a zip-car for the afternoon. Our experiment wether there would be any cars available for a weekend outing with less than a weeks notice was quite successful - maybe because this is really off-season.

For this trip, we get a red Mini Cooper convertible, which is a lot of fun to drive, but rattles quite a bit. The car is clean and in pretty good shape, except that the gas card is missing.

718 Amsterdam ave (95th st.) - Italian

We are on the upper west-side again to go shopping for strollers, cribs and other baby related infrastructure at Albee Baby Carriage. We stop here for brunch as one of the first place we encounter after we get off the subway and walk over to Amsterdam Avenue.

Atlantic Theater

Something dark is festering under the surface of everyday domestic life in some unnamed, faceless British suburb. Plenty of cryptic metaphors and symbolism hint at relationships which aren't what they seem to be at the surface between an estranged couple and their friendly neighbor (in more ways than one).

300 Amsterdam Ave - health food

The menu is a combination of vegan and omnivorous, but generally with a healthy and environmentally conscious twist. The menu is full of informative sidebar notes on various aspects of health conscious farming or cooking - i.e. how to make less damaging french fries.

For my wife's grand-parents who are from Slovakia, Easter is probably the post important family holiday in the year. Their tradition involves a very particular meal on Easter sunday. Tradition also involves that a basket is prepared with some of that food and brought to church on Easter to be blessed before the meal.

This year, we were getting up bright an early to go to their church, the Cathedral of Saint Michael the Archangel. This being a cathedral and Easter being a very special if not the defining event in the christian calendar, the ceremony and blessings were performed by the new Bishop of Passaic himself.

114 8th av. - Thai

Since there is apparently no free dinner at the office on Friday nights, we had to go across the street to try out a newest of the hyper stylish Thai restaurants along the runway section of 8th avenue. A convenient place to grab a simple byte, in a decor that is tacky in a good way and where the waiters are good looking and very friendly.

The first of a series of pregnancy and parenting books we have received from concerned friends and family, since I guess we appear to be that unprepared...

Written by a British nanny who now runs a baby consulting business in Hollywood, this has been recommended as one of the more middle of the road "pragmatic parenting" approaches. (If this is pragmatic, I rather don't want to see the non-pragmatic ones...).

The centerpiece of the prescription is the E.A.S.Y approach, as sticking to a regular and predictable but not rigidly timed cycle of Eat, Activity, Sleep and You (while the baby sleeps). Baby's seem to be creatures of habit who take much comfort in their daily routine.

The author's key observations seems to be that most parents are overwhelmed and don't know how to interpret a baby's need, since crying doesn't always mean "feed me". Much of the book is about giving parents more structure and help figuring out what baby might need this point. She also tries to reassure parents that it's perfectly normal to be overwhelmed and people always have been - except that in pre-modern times there used to be more of a stable and local support structure in traditional families and communities. Today, if you are lucky enough to live in the UK, you have the professional support from a nanny by the NHS, if you live in the US and lucky enough to be rich, you can hire a highly paid baby consultant - otherwise good luck figuring it out yourself eventually...

69 W23rd St - Irish pub

To celebrate St. Patricks day, which in a strange twist of catholic dogma falls on the 15th of March instead of the 17th, we go across the street to this Irish pub for a Guiness and some corned beef and cabbage.

Comedians on a week-night tend to be a whiny bunch, complaining all the time how bad the audience is while they are struggling through their new material. But with a friend visiting in town all the way from Seattle we couldn't be picky about the day. Besides to other weeknight performances this wasn't even that bad and there were enough people in the audience to fill a small bus.

Since my previous experiments with Apple's Time-Machine online backup solution had not turned out as expected, but I really like the idea of continuous online backup - specially since the new 10.5 Leopard release does not seem as stable any more as my old 10.2 Panther release.

The basic idea is to use rsync, which is an efficient and robust way to synchronize two file-system trees over the network. This article for example explains in much detail, how to use rsync and unix-file system hard-links to create multiple snapshots of a filesystem tree over time and only consume disk-space for the files which have change in the meantime. Minus the fancy GUI, sounds a lot like what Time-Machine is trying to do...

For my purpose a few monthly snapshots are more than good enough with the current one being kept reasonably well in sync - daily at least, as long as the laptop happens to be online long enough for the changes to be pushed over. Since the network is private, I am using a native rsync server directly instead of running over ssh, which should hopefully increase speed and reduce CPU consumption of the background backup task.

On the linux server, rotating the monthly snapshots from the current tree (using cp with hard-link option...) is as simple as adding the following script into the monthly cron queue:

/etc/cron.monthly/rotate-snapsots.sh:

#/bin/sh

cd /home/backup/powerbook
rm -rf snapshot.3
mv snapshot.2 snapshot.3
mv snapshot.1 snapshot.2
cp -al current snapshot.1

On the Mac side, the backup should only be triggered, if the laptop is connected to the home network. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be an easy way to trigger an action whenever the wireless interface connects to a network, we'll have to run a periodic job to check for it. Since the linux server advertises itself through bonjour, this could be done by detecting its presence - e.g. ping its local name - "tinylinux.local". Since this name is not very imaginative and somebody at work or on any wi-fi network I might connect could have a host with the same name, I use a check for the name of the wireless network instead to trigger the rsync backup:

#!/bin/bash

netname=<my network name>

sleep 30 # make sure wifi network is up and configured

# check if we are in home network
system_profiler SPAirPortDataType | grep $netname &> /dev/null
if [ $? != 0 ]
then
exit 0
fi

echo "starting backup"
/sw/bin/rsync -vaHKL --numeric-ids --delete --progress \
--exclude="*/Cache/" --exclude="*/.Trash" --exclude=".Spotlight-*/" \
--exclude="*/Caches/" --exclude=".Trashes" --exclude="*.trindex" --exclude=".fseventsd" \
/Users/<my homedirectory>/ tinylinux.local::backup &> /tmp/backup.log

Launchd seems to be the recommended way to run periodic and background tasks on Mac Os now, so here is a user specific launchd config for the backup service, to run the above rsync-backup.sh script every 1800s (30min):

~/Library/LaunchAgens/rsync-backup.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-
1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>rsync-backup</string>
<key>Program</key>
<string>/Users/<my homedir>/backup/rsync-backup.sh</string>
<key>StartInterval</key>
<integer>1800</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

It seems the StartInterval does unfortunately not take into account hibernation time, otherwise the job would start up most likely right away whenever the laptop is unsuspended after sleeping for more than 30min.

Even if rsync is interrupted in the middle of a synchronization, it is smart enough to pick up right away when started the next time. As long as the laptop is online for at least somewhat more than 30min on the home network, any changes made since the last time, should be synchronized properly to the current snapshot on the linux server.

The latest version of Mac Os comes with automated backup system called time machine, which besides the cool GUI is basically taking periodic snapshots of all changes and saves them to an attached disk. Since my new 17' Powerbook is suspended most of the time and moving back and forth between home and office, any solution which assumes a static environment is going to be challenging.

I was hoping for a solution which would automatically back up any changes incrementally to my linux server at home, whenever the laptop finds itself on that network. This means, the system would have to auto discover its network environment and deal with interruptions, since I am not going to wait for any invisible backup job to complete before closing the laptop again.

Following these instructions , I created an AFP share from my linux server, including a bonjour zero-conf advertisement, which can easily be discovered in the network neighborhood and mounted as a share on the mac. Despite Apple's stated commitment for zero-conf plug-and-play wireless networking, there does not seem to be a way for a share to be automatically re-mounted whenever it becomes in reach. Funny enough, this seems to work only for AFP shares exported from Apple's own new Airport extreme base-stations, which can double as a network share based on an USB attached or built-in hard-disk. Unfortunately, nobody seems to have reverse engineered yet how that is done to replicate it on linux... Another interesting quirk by Apple is that Time-Machine does not work with any AFP shares other than those base-stations anyway - something which can be circumvented pretty easily.

So far, I can at least activate time machine on that network share to play with it, but given that it will time out when disconnected and not re-connect when back in range takes out most of the fun. In addition, Time-Machine seems to want to complete writing one of its snapshots and doesn't' re-try incrementally, which means it may never finish a single one if my laptop never stays online long enough. In addition, Time-Machine seems to have a tendency to fill out any available disk-space which is quite nasty on any shared disk unless it is given a dedicated disk.

All in all, I don't seem to be able to get Time-machine to do what I want - except maybe by spending another $300 for Apple's new Time-Capsule base-station with file-server, which might get closer to a usable solutions for mobile host like my laptop. On the other hand Time-Machine seems very rigid and not very thought out yet, but I like the basic concept so maybe it is time to build something myself...

Ocean Grove

We spend a week end during off-season at bed & breakfast in Ocean Grove. The area resembles a ghost town this time of the year, not just because of the rolling fog at the time we arrive on Saturday afternoon. After days of rain, Sunday is finally clearing up a bit and we get to see the sun while driving back along the coast - or shore, as they say in Jersey...

Ocean Township, NJ

After getting married sometime last year, this is now the wedding reception for friends and family.

1 5th Avenue - Pizzeria & wine bar

Meeting some friends from a long time ago in this chic pizzeria/wine bar, where the menu is less than a page and the wine list fills the remaining 3.

Carnegie Hall

Tonight's program included excerpts from Remeo et Juliette by Hector Berlioz, Preulde and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner as well as La mer by Claude Debussy.

50 W 22nd St (5th & 6th ave) - bar, new american

Probably the closest place right across from the back-door or our new building - good for brunch or a simple dinner.

Starting my new job at Google today. For the first time, I can actually commute to work by walking to the office which is at the Port Authority building which fills the whole block between 8th & 9th Avenue at 16th Street.

46 W 22nd St - Italian

Due to the really nasty weather, we try to go to the closest restaurant from the back door of our new building, which turns out to be a lot fancier than we thought. They also have Osso Bucco alla milanese on the menu, which we have certainly go back for to try.

All in line with the trend of the latest US Dept of Labor employment statistics, I am experiencing today a brief period of unemployment until I start a new job on Monday.

Such periods of transition often bring an exciting air of freedom, of new possibilities outside the usual constraints. And with increasing age, the excitement is also mixed with a certain tired anxiety, that the new might not be all that good, that any transition comes brings additional cost, effort and risk.

From the point of view of of the existentialist, this is not even the biggest moment of pure freedom. Even in the absence of external constraints, we are restricted by our own plans. As Alfred Andersch claims in "The Cherries of Freedom ", we can only be truly free in the split second before taking a major, life altering decision...

Effective today, I am quitting my job at Bloomberg L.P. It's not an easy thing to do since Bloomberg is a rather generous employer - by todays standards. Compensation, benefits and working environment are well above par. In its about 25 year history, the company has only been growing and has never had any lay-offs and a fair amount of people have long tenure. It's the kind of company which seems to offer a pre 1980ies stable career environment where one could retire from.

One of the things I learned in my 2.5 years at Bloomberg - other than an insight into the financial services industry - is that I am still too much a technologist at heart to settle for a cosy job a above average pay working in the boiler rooms of wall street, fixing leaking pipes with duct tape or whatever it takes to keep creaking old infrastructure running. Finance companies do and should care about finance - technology is a necessary evil, a cost factor that nobody who matters fully understands or appreciates.

424 Amsterdam Ave - Cuba/Latin

After going to the upper westside to check out a new fulton sleeper-sofa for our new multi-purpose room, we stop at the first place next door for dinner.

Today is the first ultrasound. Something is in there... about 11mm long, moving and with its own heartbeat. On the printout it still looks like a kidney bean or a space alien, but experience assures us that it will eventually grow into a full sized human being. Kind of miraculous...

696 6th Ave - Italian (chain)

At the end of moving and unpacking, we go downstairs to have dinner at the Olive Garden at the base of our new building. It almost feels like a crime to support the suburbanization of the city, by visiting an Italian franchise if there are so many unique local restaurants available around - but to our defense, it is very cold, we are very tired and this is the closest place from our door.

Today, we are moving - a whopping 3 streets and 1 avenue to the north-east. However this is enough to change the zip code and instead of trying to do this ourselves, we hire a moving company since traffic conditions, elevator restrictions on both ends require a swift move. Even the professional movers almost get in trouble as the truck is a block away and we almost miss the our reserved time-slot for the loading dock and freight elevator at the new address.

No matter how far, moving is always a pain, with all the packing, unpacking - the disruption and the need to change utilities and mailing addresses along the way. I always thought as highly efficient studio dwellers, we had very little stuff, but all lined up on dollies in the hallway it still ended up being quite a bit.

Over the next 3 days, I am painting the new place. Instead of standard issue hospital-white, we chose a warm yellowish color for the rooms and some kind of light blue ("battleship grey") for the kitchen island. Despite all the effort, the result turns out to be well worth it in creating a personalize feel and to help lighten up the space.

Tonight I am picking up the keys to our new 1 BR apartment. We had been searching only half-heartedly since we really liked the Kensington-house , where we were staying, the character of a pre-war apartment with art deco accents as well as the sweeping views of open sky, city skyline and the empire state building.





We were still debating if we could not somehow make it by adding more storage or convert the dressing room (a.k.a. "walk-through-closet") into a nursery.

In the end pragmatism won over sentimentality when we found a 1 BR in one of those brand new luxury rental buildings at a "reasonable" rent, since this is the low season of the year. The apartment has a state of the art kitchen with dishwasher, marble appointed bathroom, built in AC in both rooms as well as well sized closets. The building itself has many amenities and services like a large roof deck, laundry, game room, lounge and an on-site gym. On the other hand, instead of a stunning view, we are now looking at a tall building across the 23rd St & 6th ave intersection which is one of the busiest in the area. While 20th st & 7th ave is quiet and residential, at the edge what in character is really Chelsea, this is now much busier and more commercial - dominated by chain stores and franchise restaurants - a small outdoor mall in the middle of Manhattan.

236 8th Ave (22nd St) - Chinese

My wife is really taking advantage to the max of the easy availability of the most different kinds of food in NYC and of her valid excuse for all kinds of wild cravings. Tonight it is Chinese and since it is kind of cold and snowy outside, we are looking for the closest Chinese restaurant from our door.

62 Thomas St. - Japanese

Going there are as a surprise for my birthday, we climb the stairs up and down into the dining room with the giant temple bell hanging from the ceiling. As the main attraction for the evening, we try a Kobe style Wagyu steak to see what all the hype (and price) is all about. Very rich indeed - kind of a "beef foie gras", which melts on your tongue so you don't need a steak knife.

I am happy to live in a city which is environmentally conscious enough to have a special after christmas recycling program for retired christmas trees. It is not just good for the environment, but also a nice symbolic gesture as all those trees come to life again in new forms within the city, throughout the park system.

Walking to work this morning, I could see trees all over by the curb, waiting to be picked up.

As last year, we made a reservation for low-key new year's eve at our local neighborhood French bistro. A bit more quiet than last year, probably a function of the crowd. Also a bit preoccupied with other things and we left 30min before midnight to go home toast to the new year with ginger-ale and watch the Time Square thing on TV - in HD... not as simple as it once was - they now even have life music.

My wife has not been feeling well for the last 2 weeks or so and otherwise started to exhibit some symptoms which are commonly associated with pregnancy - like a sudden appetite for strawberries at 4 in the morning... The pregnancy test from the drug-store turns positive bright red within seconds and will all the other evidence, the case seems to be clear: we are going to have a baby later this year, probably in July/August.

The happy news creates somewhat of a planing frenzy since we quickly need to decide on some logistics for the coming year. How quickly perspectives change - now I find myself with a sudden new interest in hospital ratings, baby cribs, strollers and 2 bedroom apartments.

Christmas Eve dinner in my wife's family is traditionally at the grand-parent's house. The traditional holy supper meal on Christmas Eve consists of bread with honey & garlic, mushroom soup, sauerkraut soup and piroghi.

Finally all the gifts are wrapped and ready to go for the next few days of visits with family.

Atlantic Theatre 336 W 20th St

A piece of scientific history reenactment theater - with some level of dramatic license to bring together events and people which didn't happen at the same time or didn't meet in person. At the core of the story is the fact that both Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace had discovered the theory of natural selection through competition for limited resources as the explanation for the evolution or transmutation of species.

The story begins when Wallace writes do Darwin with a request for help in getting a paper published in England outlining the core of a theory Darwin himself had been working on for 20 years but never dared to publish. Even though Darwin and Wallace came to the same conclusion on a fundamental mechanism which seems to drive the earths biosphere, but the conclusions they draw from it for the personal lives seem to be fairly different.

Masterwork Chorus @ Carnegie Hall

A traditional christmas performance at Carnegie hall provided the backdrop for a family visit to NY with a stroll along 5th avenue and visit to the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree and dinner at one of our favorite neighborhood restaurants.

Today is winter solstice , the astronomical event which is at the core of so many festivities around this holiday season. It marks the shortest day/longest night of the year and also the turning point after which the days are beginning to get longer again. It seems than nearly every culture originating in the northern hemisphere has come up with some festivity around that time, often involving fire, light and a spirit of hope and optimism as things are taking a turn for the better again.

When christianity became mainstream in the Roman Empire, winter solstice fell on Dec 25th in the Julian calendar, which was turned into a festival to celebrate the birth of Chirst - to superseded the Roman Sol Invictus festival. We know very little about the real birthday of Jesus of Nazareth - except that it most certainly was NOT in winter.

Todays christmas traditions in particular, have been shaped by a wild mix of influences over the years, roman, germanic, celtic, medieval, victorian to modern commercial and consumerist and still only represent a small fraction of the cultural heritage surrounding this time of the year.

In that sense, a happy holiday season to all!

24 5th Ave - New American

With a wine list that is quite encyclopedic, this sounds a place to try the recommended wine pairings with the menu. Quite expensive, but a sinfully indulging 3h dinner event, which in the absence of an expense account, we had to pay for by ourselves.

380 W 33rd - General Post Office

One of the frequently asked questions is how Santa manages to deliver all these presents in time for Christmas. The key to this might be as for many other problems in efficient order fulfillment and supply chain management: outsourcing!




Straight from the factories in East Asia via a chain of UPS, Fed-ex and USPS straight under the Christmas tree! Large scale order fulfillment agents like Amazon.com now even allow goods to be gift-wrapped before shipping and delivery directly to a 3rd party address.

While red suit, flying sled and reindeers may be good for parades and ceremonial spectacle, the real miracle these days is happening on 33rd St - somewhere in the under-belly of the giant beaux-art structure , which is the New York City home of the US postal service...

200 9th ave (22nd/23rd) - Eureopean/American Brasserie

A dinner to welcome a former colleague to the neighborhood - he just moved to Chelsea from NJ. Menu seems to be eclectic bistro fare, somewhat Austrian and German inspired.

We had our own Christmas tree lighting ceremony tonight after finishing the decoration today.

Chelsea Community Church - St Peter's Church 346 W 20th St

We had gone there a few years earlier and found it a very nice event to get into a festive mood for the holidays and to rediscover that Christmas once used to be a religious holiday centering around the story of the birth of christ.

Heicrich Hotel, 10 Livingston Avenue New Brunswick, NJ

Tonight we are heading to NJ for the holiday party of my wife's company, an up and coming startup, which is quite a bit bigger every year and so is the party. Pretty nice this year, in a hotel in downtown New Brunswick, which can be reached easily from NYC.

56 Beaver St - Steak house

Since we were in the area and never been inside the legendary Delmonico's Steak house, which is about a block off Wall Street and about as old as the stock-market down there. The building and interior looks classy in a old-fashioned kind of way. The steaks were good and given the decor and ambiance quite a standout among the high-price steakhouses.

Suspenders Bar & Restaurant, 111 Bway

We got there about 1h after the party started and left not too long after since alcohol on empty stomach wasn't exactly what we needed at this time.

Jersey City

With an entire parlor floor of a JC victorian town-house as its new venue, this fixture of our pre-holiday social calendar is taking on a whole new scale - with ample bread, social games and everything.

In the tradition of my childhood, Santa Claus - or "Samichlaus" was not associated with Christmas, but with December 6th - the day of St. Nicholas. In the evening of this day, he would come out of the woods with a donkey carrying heavy bags of nuts, chocolates, mandarins, gingerbread etc. to hand out to kids who, according to the big book, supposedly had been reasonably well behaved throughout the year or at least can somewhat redeem themselves on the spot by reciting a poem or sing a song. While Santo Claus does the talking and clearly seems to be brains of the operation, "Schmutzli" a dark clad, usually somewhat sinister fellow is the muscle. He does the heavy lifting with the bags and rumor has it that he takes children who are not nice, stuffs them into his bag and carries them off into the woods with him, never to be seen again. Nobody seems to actually know anybody in particular who disappeared in such a way, still most kids seem to think that Santa Claus is a guy you better don't want to mess with...

Since we now live a bit far from the forest, we had to make our own basket of nuts etc. for our inner child.

The best thing about Christmas in my childhood always was the anticipation. It always starts with the 1st Advent, i.e. the 4th sunday before Christmas Day. Every Advent sunday would be a small celebration with a festive dinner, the lighting of one more candle, musical performances and maybe some small presents for the kids.

Disneys heavily self referential satire on a variety of its classical fairy-tale cartoon movies. A series of animated characters are thrown out of their animated fairy-tale world into the presumably not so fairy-tale world of NYC, leading to some funny juxtaposition of Disney fairy-tale and NYC clichés. All in all some light-hearted humorous fun, but probably (hopefully!) no serious contender for the Oscars.

Today was the closing for the sale of the house in Washington Town Center. It had sold after only about 10 days on the market - in fact the people who ended up buying it had made an offer on the first week-end, before it was even officially showing. They needed to get out at the end of their lease, so the time to close was rather quick too, not leaving us much time to clear out. Most of the stuff which was in the house, is now in storage - "organized" in such an arbitrary way, that we will probably never find anything in there unless we clear it all out. The apartment in the city is now starting to feel like a ship being readied for a 3 year voyage of exploration into the south-sea.

Metropolitan Opera - Lincoln Center (Bway/64th St.)

After a few week-ends of packing and moving stuff into storage to get ready for closing next week, we think we need a break and some time for ourselves. As a last minute decision, we catch this last performance of Mozart's "Die Zauberflöte" at the Met. A strange thing of an operate - or rather not an Opera by the standards of the time, but a "Singspiel" written not for the court, but the popular theater in the form of a kind of magical fairy tale complete with heroic heroes, flashy villains and comic relief characters. Somewhat unexpectedly worked into this formula is a recruiting pitch for the Freemasons in particular or in general any advocacy of enlightenment, where the light of reason should triumph over the darkness of irrational superstition. With its richness and contrasts, the magic flute has the kind of "multi-level accessibility" to be enjoyed by children and opera snobs alike. An it must be particularly fun for the production designers - which in the case of this production at the met have outdone themselves. The rich set reminds of a rotating version of the time-warner center but the real eye-candy are the various elments of puppetry, from the giant serpent, to flying birds to the stunning costume of the Queen of the Night.

Garfield/North Haledon, NJ

A traditional Roman-Catholic wedding in the local church, by the long-time parish priest (coming out of retirement once just once more for this occasion). Followed by a big feast afterwards.

Garfield, NJ

Because of the wedding tomorrow, this traditional thanksgiving at my wife's grandparents is unusually busy - with over 17 people from all over the country. As I have been told, it hasn't been that busy in a very long time - which might be true then be now even at the "children's table", the average age is over 30.

We take a day to visit Zurich and meet up with some friends and colleagues there which I had not seen in a long time. We have dinner at LaSalle a trendy new restaurant in the now very hip industrial quarter of Zurich-West (no relations to the Rock-band by the same name).

Rest Schmiedstube Attelwil, AG

A party with my extended family, for my father's 70th birthday and our wedding 4 month earlier to the day.

A short extended week-end trip to Switzerland at the occasion of my father's 70th birthday and our 2nd post-wedding party. First day to relax and get over the jet-lag and such.

As the year before , we dress up a and head down to Canal street to join the Halloween Parade heading up 6th avenue. This time, we are more experience, bring a camera and manage to sneak out at 19th street to the west-side. Maybe it was the colder weather or the looming recession, but the streets along the parade route seemed to be a bit less crowded than last year.

126 W 13th St (6th/7th ave) - Italian

Exquisite Italian bistro - specially for the homemade pasta.

Peter F. Drucker

Looking for an introduction to the work of the late management philosopher Peter Drucker, this sounded like a good starting point - given his extensive writings. Either that or an MBA.

429 Amsterdam Ave (80th & 81st St) - Tapas/Spanish & Portuguese

After the walk back through central park, we stop on the upper west side for a drink at a student dive bar and for dinner at this place across the street. The Paella wasn't extraordinary and we probably would have been better off to stick with the Tapas.