holidays

I finally made up my mind and if nothing comes between I'll book a flight to Mallorca tomorrow morning. The plan is to fly from Basel at around 6:45am on Wednesday (blame Easyjet for the time) and return on Thursday next week. In between that I'll be hiking the GR221 on the North-West side of the isle, so don't expect frequent or any posts at all for a week or so...

room

So this is the result of around 10 days of looking for an appartment in Zurich:


Well, don't laugh, besides a pink toilet the deal includes a very calm room facing to a very calm backyard.



Indeed, it's a really cool place, newly renovated, in the heart of the city (Niederdorf), 2min. from the main railways station - and a bit more than 5min. by tram to my working place.

holiday plans

The GR20 on Corse will probably take too long for now, also several people indicated that it'll be pretty tough with all the snow on it - probably. So I figure I won't take the chance as I'll be hiking on my own.

So I decided to maybe go for Mallorca - ..... - Mallorca?


No, not exactly. My plans are more along the lines of flying into Palma for cheap and then escape anything that sounds or looks German in a second.



As Marc told me, the GR221 which runs over the isle is really beautiful and also not as high (max. 1400 meters), so there won't be snow I guess and climate should be nice. But I'm still open for other ideas if you have suggestions...

Roomsearch part V

Oh well, my life is not very exciting at the moment. standard procedure: admin stuff in the morning, roomsearch in the afternoon, pack bike into car, drive to Zurich around 4pm, arrive at 5pm, visit appartments for rent till 8pm, return to Basel.

My backup plan now is to keep searching till Friday, then simply go for a temporary room for 2-3month and search when I've started working in Zurich. Might be easier with working permit and everything in place. But hopefully something nice works out this week already.

Yesterday my all-time favorite apt was due to be inspected, it's very central, calm, own balcony, sunny, rooftop terrasse, new kitchen & bath, wooden floor, what have you. Figure people would kill for this apt. Anyways, the way it actually will go is this: one of the 50 applicatints will be a native swiss female cleric with a salary of 15`000 CHF per month, no animals, not playing an instrument. She will be the future tenant, I figure.

So long.

Roomsearch part IV (relaxed!)

Sometimes I am reminded that you can do the exactly same thing in different ways: creatively or letting yourself be pushed around.

I already felt slightly stressed when only thinking about finding an appartment in Zurich, so I decided I had to find an approach that would add some positive vibes to it. So I put together the list of all appartments with inspection dates next week and packed my bike in the back of my car.

And indeed, compared to the hectic of driving around in Zurich with a car, pedaling along with a bike is pure pleasure. You don't have to follow insanely constructed one-way streets that lead you anywhere but not where you want, nobody honks at you because you're looking for an adress, no problems with parking in front of the houses ...

Anyway, my first house - the only where a inspection was due yesterday - was in a side street of Langestrasse. First I was deligthed: quite, wooden floor, right in the centre. Then some minus points appeared: only two rooms, kitchen very old, no dishwasher, direct neighbourhood with around 3 sexshops ... - but in summary it'S a lively quarter with "normal" restaurants around, not dodgy.

So I'm really thinking about applying, it's only 5 min per tram from where I work. Also the real estate agent managed to work out a semi-smile when I mentioned that I work for a bank and do not plan to establish a community living in the apt, so my chance among the 30 applicants might be pretty good.

Now for the nice part: cycling around I found a really cool neighbourhood restaurant "Bei Babette" in Bertastr., on the right hand side shortly after coming off Badenerstr.


They have really good custom-beer and it's just a very nice place to waste your saturday afternoon reading, chatting or just thinking about the world in general...

Roomsearch Part III

So, cancelled going to Ticino this weekend because I figure all those lazy competitors for appartments might take the weekend off and maybe chances are better to conquer a target this way. Based on my language you might infer that looking for a room in Zurich is not fun, indeed it's war disguised with a smile.

So here's one of my No1 objects currently, it'S around 55 square meters and very central and based on the street it should also be calm, wish me luck ...



And of course, if you have any ideas on finding a flat in Zurich, LET ME KNOW!!!

Room in Zurich / Rote Fabrik / Trois Pommes Factory outlet

Yesterday I had my first go checking out rooms in Zurich. I figure it's gonna be tough. Not that the appartments were bad, but out of the three there wasn't really one that I totally liked - plus in each there were around 5 other visitors that checked it out only in the 5 minutes when Eva and I were there...

But from my first impression I gonna primarily focus on Wollishofen, it's pretty green there, close to the lake, and still pretty close to the city.

After we checked out a room there we went to the "Rote Fabrik" to get some dinner. It's a old production site with studios, exhibition areas, concert space etc., but also with a really nice bar / restaurant, directly at the lake. As we had seats right at the window we had a faboulous lake view in the evening and food was really good and not pricey at all. Also it's a really lively location, people discussing, laughing, reading, working, playing, everything... - cool atmosphere. Also they have a big outer area right at the lake, should be really good in summertime.

If you go there don't forget to check out the Trois-Pommes factory outlet which is almost in the direct neighbourhood just some blocks away if you follow the road down the lake southwards, also on the left-hand side like the "rote Fabrik. But be warned: as the have Gucci and Prada and the like, even the checkout is not exactly cheap, but there might be a good deal if you're lucky.

pasta siciliana

Yesterday we had one of the best pastas I had for month -- surprisingly, it doesn't even take as long as the spaghetti need to become al dente to prepare the sauce!

Here's the receipt (4 persons): 500g spagehtti or whatever noodles you like (take deCecco, thei're the best), 350g really fresh and tasty tomatos, some fresh basil (basilikum), 3 (or as much as you can handle..) garlics (Knoblauch), 80g almonds (Mandeln) without shell, some of the best olive oil you can get (2 big spoons) plus black pepper.

Heat up water and start preparing the sauce: cut tomatos small, (keep some aside to add later), put garlic and almonds in a mixer, mix, then add tomtatos and basil and oil and pepper and mix some more. for my part I would leave some almonds and tomatos aside, cut them only with a knive, and afterwards add it again to the mixed part, so that you have some bigger chunks in the sauce as well. so much for the sauce - wait for the noodles to be ready and then mix it with the sauce and serve. delicious.

more receipts in :

n tables

Wow, pretty cool tables, check out their home page on myspace..





and, a friend of n-tables, "Salcön"... - seems to be a band, and includes pretty cool and weird art stuff... - maybe they'll be featured in the art fair "Liste 2007" in Basel in three weeks time?

room in zurich

Finding an appartment in Zurich is quite a task I guess. At least that's the impression I got after one day of scrambling through different homepages, mailingslists and writing various mails to friends and business contacts.

My favorite is 3 Minutes by foot from my working place, right in the city centre, still with a quite reasonable price for Zurich standards. The inspection date is next week on Wednesday. As the lady on the phone already told me that there will be quite a crowd around I figure it will be more an inspection of aspirants than of the flat itself. Maybe I should bring along some roses and champagne to cheer up the broker? We'll see.

Anyways, if anybody has ideas or even some place to rent out in Zurich I'll be more than happy to be contacted via a comment below this post. Basically I am looking for 2-3 rooms, close to Paradplatz, which in my terms means not further away than 15min with public transport.

But now for my real-favorite housing object on Zurich lake:


only three minor problems with this appartment
- it's not in Zurich but in Meilen
- it's already taken
- it would probably cost me the equivalent of 15 years of future wage, if everything goes smoothly, that is.

Brainteaser solution

Ok, that was a long time to think about the problem from May 5th. You haven't read it yet? Stop reading and go back to the post and make up your mind before reading the solution.

Funny enough, the chances of winning the game are 2/3 overall. That said, it's obvious that you have to switch doors to arrive at this high probability. Because obviously, if you chose one of the three doors, and stay with the choice even after the elimination of an empty door, your chances is and always will be only 1/3.

For myself, I came up with the following explanation, which I then afterwards also found on the web: imagine you play the game three times. Everyone would agree that if you don't switch, chances are that you win the game 1 time, at least on average (or say you play it 3 million times, the number of winning games will be pretty close to 1 million).

Put differently, if your are right 1 time out of three, you are wrong 2 times out of three. This means on average your switch will make win in two times out of three and lose only one time. Straightforward, isnt' it?

What I liked about this problem is that it makes you think quite a while, at least me, even after coming up with a reasonable solution and argumentation. If you want to read more about it check out the Ziegenproblem on Wikipedia Germany or the Monty Hall Problem on Wikipedia international.

mymuesli.com

Up to now, all the projects in this section were direct friends of mine, so this time a novelty by presenting a project of a good friend of a friend of a good friend of mine: mymuesli.com . Basic idea: custom made muesli.


So first things first I wanted to do a reality check to my beloved "Seitenbacher" muesli, and as I am more the "basic" muesli eater keeping it real with almost no add-ons, I randomly picked a more complicated muesli mix from the Seitenbacher shop . It's called Müsli 721 (codename: indulgent mix..) and contains raspberries, blackberries, black currants (Johannisbeeren), raisins and apples plus almond reeds added. Trying to reproduce this in the mymuesli shop I picked a basic mix and ... only found raisins, apples as well as the almonds. Mh. Okay, lets pick three substitutes for the missing berries, I go for figs (Feigen), Mangos and cherries. Going to the checkout this makes 7.00 EUR for 575g corresponding to 12.17 EUR per kg while Seitenbacher is at 3.99 for 750g or 5.32 per kg. Summary: maybe the random choice was disadvantegous, but I didn't get what I hypothetically wanted or would have gotten at Seitenbacher, also it's not exactly cheap, but maybe I picked relatively more expensive ingredients.


Yet to be fair, the choice of other ingredients is really cool and large, and the coolnes factor of customizing your own muesli shouldnt be underestimated, I figure there'S a lot of folks out there who like the Seitenbacher Mix X but always have to go through some pains to pick out ingredient Y or separately buying ingrediant Z and add it.

Further thoughts (consultants disease to always make suggestions..)
- to me it looks like a black socks business model, people need the muesli in some fixed intervalls, so they should probably offer combi-packages for a year or so in addition to the regular shop; I'm not quite sure if this would help with prices because it would have to be mixed fresh each quarter year
- I'm not quite sure about the positioning of the product, from my random sample it looks like it's potentially twice as expensive as a standard muesli, so it'S probably a premium product
- is this scaleable? it's highly customized, so probably a lot of hand-effort

Anyways, I thinks it's definitely a cool idea and has potential.

jobsearch & breaks

I'm in the middle or rather at the end of looking for a job, which went pretty good except that now is the time to chose which is rather hard. I'll post results as soon as I made my mind up. Anyways, chances are that I will start working beginning of June in Zurich, hurray!

---

If you also need to procrastinate, check out the site of the breakin convention, I highly reccommend to launch the streaming player (banner on the lower right hand side of the page) and check out some performances, e.g. "Frank II Louise". Or check out this guy here, Frank Ejara...

Weekend brainteaser

Here's a little weekend brain teaser I encountered on the net - something to think about for rainy weekends..

THINK! Do not use Google! I will post the solution in some days, feel free to comment with your answer. If you have an answer think again, you're probably wrong...

You find yourself on a game show called "Let's Make A Deal." The game is very simple. There are three doors: door #1, door #2, and door #3. Behind one door is a million dollars. The other two doors contain worthless joke prizes. All you have to do is pick which door you want to open, and you get whatever is behind it. But you only get to open one door. By simple math, then, you obviously have a 1 in 3 chance of picking the correct door and becoming an instant millionaire.

pic is taken from here.

You pick a door. As soon as you tell Monty (the gameshow host) what door you want to open, he stops and says, "Okay, you've made your choice. Now, I'm going to do what we always do here on this game. I'm going to open one of the other two doors for you that I know has a booby prize." And he does so. Then he asks, "Okay, now, would you like to stay with your original guess, or would you like to switch to the other door that's still closed? You only get one shot, so do you want to stay with your original choice, or switch?"

Here's the question: is there any compelling reason to switch doors?

bjork - volta

cool, Björk is coming with a new album out on Monday 7.May --- sounds already pretty promising what can be read on amazon already. check out the album homepage for a preview.

Executive pay - Yermack attacks Round 2

I was lucky enough to write a seminar paper in New York, as part of the Zaeslin Program of the University of Basel, supervised by Prof. David Yermack.

I figure he'll have to hire bodyguards soon, as angry managers gonna start mobbing on front of his house and office.

Just last year he published a study titled: "Flights of fancy, Corporate jets, CEO perquisites, and inferior shareholder returns" (Journal of Financial Economics, 80).

Basically he showed that the private used of corporate jets by executive is very bad for you as shareholder, indeed generating inferior returns compared to a benchmark group. This was tightly related to golf club membership and golf handycap...

As Manager Magazin points out today in an article, he now went into the second round of the battle (together with Crocker Liu), analyzing the house of S&P 500 managers. Obviously, managers buying lofty houses are a definite SELL signal to investors. I haven't had the chance yet to read the study myself (which you can get free here at SSRN ), but according to Manager Magazin the key results are:

- strong outperformance of companies stocks whose managers bought smaller houses than average ( 20% abnormal return over 36month)
- strong underperformance of companies with luxury mansions bought by managers (-25%, 36Month)

I have yet to confirm these results by reading the study myself, but this sounds really impressive, compared to the small return gaps you can normally explain with event studies or return prediction models.

David Yermack

Would you like to buy this?

Check out kancept.com for portfolios of cool possible future products, I must say I would surely by the transparent toaster ... - the page takes you through different designs and you can always vote and see how others liked the stuff...

Some update on my own life coming soon, probably tomorrow...