Sailing on Lake Zurich

It had been a while since I've been writing on my log. I have been busy with a lot of MINICK projects recently.

Last week, I worked from the Zurich office. During the week ends, I was attending sailing classes on the lake Zurich with Katia.

If you want to know how an sailing carreer starts, have a look at the pictures I have taken last Saturday.

This is the kind of sport I like.

Keyboard Layout

I took my laptop from Switzerland to London. But using british computers means also getting used to the british keyboard layout. That's not a big deal, unless you have to switch back and forth all the time, if you're working with both systems at the same time. So I decided to switch to the british system, as most of the characters used for programming are much easier to access. I'll find out - the hardest bit are y and z that are swapped, that's whz zou might find strange characters here in the next couple of dazs.

Soon I can consider myself as an UberGeek!

The Sky is the Limit

The Sky is the Limit
Originally uploaded by christoph b..

Yesterday, I visited my friend Andy, who I've met in Birmingham, when I was there in 2003. He lives at Barbican, in one of these massive towers on floor 37. It's quite a good and central place to stay, right next to the business district of London, near London Wall street. The weather was nice and we could see all the way over the city through to the Canary Wharf. It's just amazing, induldging with a glass of beer on the balcony and watching the sunset reflecting in the glass walls of the "Gurke". But this fantastic view has it's price. All you need is another loose 590 £ per week and the sky is yours.

We're not afraid

We're not afraid
Originally uploaded by christoph b..

My contribution to Werenotafraid.com.

Attacks on London

Everything started as usual this morning. The first thing I noticed was, when I arrived at my office was, that a car was horning and driving at high-speed on the wrong lane. It then became clear. At the office, I read in the news, there was a Underground issue at nearby Liverpool Street Station. Apparently a train exploded and they were suspecting a circuit shortcut.

Only when we heared about Buses exploding, all this was getting suspicious. Now we are following the news and hope, everything's going to be fine.

Currently the army is getting in, nobody can leave the city, the mobile phone network has gone down.

We'll check the ticker at http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,364104,00.html

Computing Fruits

Yesterday, I went to the Apple Store. It's a huge flagship store of apple, where you cannot only consume Apple products but also pure lifestyle. The two stories building in Regents Street in the middle of London (Oxford Circus) is perfectly designed for all fashion-aware techies out there. It's for people that are tired of staring into grey windoze boxes with cloudy desktop wallpapers that turn to white on blue text screens from time to time. The all black dressed staff is friendly and willing to consult you on any product that is exposed in the wooden shelfs. The cash desk is located in front of a huge white glowing Apple logo layed into a shiny silver metallic wall. You have to queue up in a long line indicated by cords to get to the cash desk and finally be able to pay. It's like waiting in line in Disneyland for the "Rock'n'Roller Coaster".

2 Minutes more for a Big Mac

According to the UBS Wealth Management Research department, it takes 14 minutes of work in Zurich to get a Big Mac at McDonald's. In London, it's two minutes more. But it's undoubtedly easier to get one here as there are way more McDonald's in town.

However, the living prices in London are massive. A good apartment (4-Rooms, built after 1980, garage, central resident area) that costs a 3000U$ in Zürich per month, would cost a 8420U$ in London.

In Zurich, the "Standard Car" according to the UBS is a "Ford Focus 2.0", whereas it's a "Vauxhall Astras GSI 2.0i" in London.

Find more very interesting and world-wide comparisons in the UBS Economic Research Paper "Prices and Earnings" (2003 / Update 2005)