birthday

Mh, somehow it's a shame to work on birthdays, but well, weather looks better starting from tomorrow, so I figured working today and having some more time next week for alle the powder on the mountains makes sense...

Anyways, gonna be off for the next days till probably mid of next week, so do not expect much news on this blog up to end of next week..

In case you're hungry for input why not check out those pages here:
Velowunder ; Dilbert blog ; chuchichaeschtli

And here's a really amazing page which I discovered some time ago. For me, it's the best visualization of time i've ever seen:
family history in pictures

2nd wintertime

Wow, wintertime is gaining ground massively. Finally some heavy snow again, up to 1 meter of fresh, in some places probably more than the rest of wintertime alltogether. Looking forward to a long freeriding & skitouring season up to beginning of May...

Forest in Inzlingen, nicely powdered

politics quiz again

Mh, quiztime again:

pick a institution with a line of business worth almost 50 billion EUR where almost half of the funds are fraudulently allocated.

the Cosa Nostra? the Yakuza? Russia (ok, that might not be far off) ? Global carpet dealers association? Airbus (ok, maybe also..) ?

Ok, again it's the EU. Agricultural subsidies account for roughly 50 billion and almost 45% of subsidy proposals seem to be flawed. Check it here . (german)

Addendum: here's more fun stuff about EU budget from Spiegel online..

Engelberg Saturday March 17th

Here's the promised report on Saturday. Picked up Samuel in Luzern, then we rode together to Engelberg. Snow was of course not exactly fresh but skiable with some patches of untracked powder look-alike (almost..).

We skied mostly stuff around the Jochpass, and did one descent from Titlis, here's the playground:


And here's the route we did:

The station on the top left is Titlis. Now you ask: what's that funny circle the red line is diong there on the top right? Well, talk about navigation problems ... ;)

Hiking up the ridge

Enligthened

Samuel rocking the "Nadelöhr" from the small down to the big "Sulzli"

Jochpass descent

On of the Sulzli couloirs

it's steep, yes..

EU budget

Ok, quiz time again. Pick the most corrupt EU country. Italy? Greece? Czech Republic?



Ok, trick question - it's the EU itself. For german speakers: go check out the current Spiegel Online article by Daniel Hannan here . For english speakers check out his webpage , click on "news" , then "Daniel Hannan's articles" and then go to the article Another year, another EU fraud - 16 November 2005 .

Highlights include:

Many British people believe that the problem is cultural: Denis Healey once spoke of "an olive belt" that divides prim Northern Europeans from naughty Mediterraneans. His Lordship would doubtless enjoy the case cited in the current report of a Greek shepherd who, in 2002, registered a herd of 470 sheep. That year, apparently, 70 of his animals were taken by wolves. The next year, 192 of them were carried away. The year after, 239. Yet, last year, he still had 470 sheep and, according to the auditors "no evidence could be produced by the farmer to justify how he restocked his herd".

But here's the thing: the same kind of ruse is identified in North-East England. The EU system is turning Geordies into Greeks - or, more accurately, turning Geordies, Greeks and everyone else into subsidy-hungry Euro-supplicants.

While reading I was unsure if I should laugh out loud or start crying and cross the boarder to Switzerland and never return.

Daniel Hannan also has a blog .

blogcamp Switzerland and trigami

A good time to talk about Remo's projects: blogcamp Switzerland takes place this Saturday, March 24th (actually my birthday..) - check out the wiki to find out more. Basically it's a interactive meeting of 200 bloggers discussing any topic related to blogging. It's designed in the barcamp style, a form of gathering established in San Francisco.

There's currently 8 spaces left out of the 200 participant spots, so I you want to go there hurry up; it's free and open to any blogger interested person.

Remo's longer term project, respectively company is trigami . Idea: bloggers post honest reviews and get paid by trigami. But pictures say more than words ... :


also check out Remo's blog with a lot of interesting stuff centered around internet / Blogging topics: http://www.chuchichaeschtli.com/

Weekend summary

Wow, nice weekend. Some explorative freeriding in Engelberg with Samuel and Georg on Saturday, and then the team weekend of the TVISnow, my skiing club, on Sunday with blue skies (probably the only place in Switzerland) on Sunday. Update on both coming soon..

Samuel in a nice face on Jochpass, Engelberg.

**** !

Who ordered springtime? Common, hands up. Just bought my new skiing pants for half a fortune yesterday, I can’t deal with those kind of conditions..

PS: Any donations for a flight to Chile or Alaska would be highly estimated. I’ll send you my bank details via mail. It’s tax deductible, protection of endangered species (race: fanatic skier).

PS: any comments on pants welcome of course..

Mission freeride weekend

Ok, posts were not very frequent the last days. So here’s some update.

The (long) weekend from Friday to Sunday was really sweat. On Friday, I picked up Charles in Bern and we drove together to the Schilthorn next to Grindelwald. Weather was excellent and so was the snow. Below some pictures of Charles rocking it on Wassenegg.

Then, Saturday and Sunday it was of course time for Mission Freeride, the 5^th time this really cool event took place. Make sure to check the homepage, there's also the feature that was broadcasted on swiss TV on the event on the front page.

You can also find some detailed comments in german from me in the board of backcountry.ch here.

So here a short summary:

Saturday started of cloudy, looking out of the window at 7am I decided to roll around once more instead of going straight to the breakfast. (tipp if you want to stay in Mürren: Sportchalet, 50CHF per night incl. breakfast and free entrance to the public pool at the Sportzentrum). But already at 8am, the situation had changed completely: blue skies and around 30cm of powder from the night. Doesn’t get any better.

But still the problem of clouds coming in remained over the day so starting the contest was kind of a problem. To everyone’s disappointment the contest was also placed again in the “Wilde Wand” and not in the north-face below Schilthorn. Therefore the whole contest was kind of bushwhacking and trying to figure out a line between the obstacles. Well, still it was fun. Don’t know how I did, results are not. I’ll let you know as soon as they are published.

the comfortable "Turnhalle" Mürren, Saturday night.

The evening in the rotating restaurant on the Schilthorn at 2970m was as always straight fantastic. Perfect pasta and salads surrounded by perfect sunset. Unbelievable.

View from Schilthorn at around 6:30pm...

Next day: as on Friday rocking the Wassenegg part of Schilthorn, here is a
pic of some of our lines, the camera broke during the action shots..

You see the nice, almost straigt line in the only sunny part in the left-hand part of the picture? well, that was my last line of the afternoon, golden powder.

WWZblog.ch

Yesterday, I had a very good meeting with Remo Uherek from realwwz about creating a platform connecting all the activities of the WWZ (the business faculty of the University of Basel where I studied up to now).

Well, in fact we wanted to talk about the group we created in Xing (ex- OpenBC) , but ended up figuring that a blog was the coolest way to bring all activities and interest groups surrounding the WWZ together. He already set up the blog ( wwzblog.ch ).

The idea is that of a community blog, the two of us are going to contribute, but also WWZ administration for news, the VBÖ (alumni club of the WWZ), the BESS and so on. The goal is to make it THE place for information around studying business in Basel. This includes bringing together alumni and current students more than it used to be.

I have the gut feeling that this thing has the potential to really take off and promote the WWZ in a major way if pushed enough. Especially the connection between alumni and the faculty could improve in a major way through this plattform in the years to come.

Any comments on the project are highly appreciated. I you can contribute let me know. We're looking for someone who does small graphic jobs for the blog (only one time stuff).

big cleanup

My dad urged me to clean up the space occupied by my old disks. Remember: the stuff you used to back in the days where nobody knew what a flash drive or a USB stuck or even a usb port was. Oh well, I figure 20 years from now I'll show people those pictures and tell a story: you know, back then, this is what it took to have 300MB of portable memory ..



I'm not quite positive if providing a living space for old disks qualifies as protection of endangered species, but just in case you have any use for this stuff let me know, because it's on it's way to digital heaven ...

Friday, movie day: The good shepherd; check out Imdb or the movie homepage.


First of all: really worth watching. Although it starts out slow, it really takes you into the world of secret service in a totally different way compared to maybe, James Bond, Mission Impossible or what have we.


It's about the FBI and how the CIA is born, about Skulls&Bones, the cold war, Cuba and related events. Besides all the historical facts presented, which are I believe are pretty correct, the main achievement of the film is investigation of the human factor.

Spys are not sleak over-humans here, they have lifes, fears, are vulnerable. The mistrust infiltrates their lifes, destroys their relationships and leaves broken persons behind. Troughout the film it seems like Matt Damon dies inside, yet outside he's still the guy serving his country..

When was the last time you leaned back and read an ordniary magazin? Not online, not with five links to further content, just pages ...

That's what I did today because my cold prevented me from going on the mountain to go skiing. Anyways, it wasn't a bad choice. Some time ago I read Cicero, a german political magazine, and think wasn't quite ready for it back then. But today I really enjoyed the selection of topics: interview with former cancellor Helmut Schmidt, pictures of desks of several politicians and managers, a visit to the libarary of the writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez and so on. Lovely sunday afternoon lecture.


Further reading, a real standard:



and to close the circle, brandeins, a magazine I am subscribed to for 60 centimeteres now (that's the height of the staple in my room... )