ohhhh markus ….

yeah! summer arrived in the city (24C/75F) and I could finally use my inline-skates in the central park!
did a grand tour around the park (full cycle, approximately 10km with MANY hills, seems like Taekwondo trains similar muscles … ;)) and recorded some videos. unfortunately I enabled shake protection which makes the video worse for this kind of movement.

Afterwards a short visit at forbidden planet, finding some decent new comics, having some street food and then getting home and playing a couple of games of poker with a nice late night walk through the east village at 2 in the morning. incredible how many people were on the road. loved it! followed by a nice game of pool with Stephane (and ohhhh my good, this guy destroyed me ;).
oh, and btw, on Thursday there was the big farewell party of Daniela in a small bar next to Union Square. and guess who is sitting there on the side of the crowd, having a drink with a friend? Jeremy Piven. love it.
on Sunday I finally had time to browse SOHO and discovered the first

shop of my life (”LOUNGE“) where I would wear very proudly almost every piece, REAL fashion for guys, superior stuff, not that H&M kind of crap (I almost cried when I browsed the shop). unfortunately the price tags were out of this world, too. I am not quite ready to spend $900 for a sweater or $300 for a shirt. but if I would, ohhhhhh my god would I be a happy boy (and if anyone of you is into jewelry/accessories, they have quite a range, starting at $8000 for a small diamond ring …. ) and don’t even try to take a picture in there. immediately after I have turned on my camera a shop assistant approached me, forcing me to show him my taken pictures (I couldn’t even take any) to make sure there were none taken. stupid. stupid. stupid policy.
had to do some alternate shopping and got me some nice speakers from the apple store and watched the following little performance in one of the many streets of SOHO ….

ok, so my parents were here a couple of days ago. what I didn’t tell was that all my roommates were sick at this time and surprise surprise I got sick, too, three days after my parents landed (and used my vacation time being sick in bed). got healthy again with the help of some antibiotics, just to catch a stomach flu 12 days later, from which I just recovered.

and now! the first sunny and warm day (with two more to follow on Saturday and Sunday) and I spent lunch break gladly with some colleagues in the sun (and walked the brookyn bridge after work for the first time. truly lovely!). and guess what? got such a bad sunburn that I have to be really careful tomorrow and on Sunday about my time being spent outside. ohhh boy.

(note: poker is quite a nice game, just finished a nice and “international” one just for fun here in the flat. 5 players. 5 countries. Austria, France, Hong Kong, Japan, United Kingdom. sooo New York

passed the green belt test today. YES!
btw, you can choose if you want to try the breaking board part with one or two boards, I went for two, split them at the first try … yeah!

picture of the broken boards are posted later on

my parents are on their flight back to vienna, my belt test is coming up and I just finished watching a movie with a wonderful message about life (”click”). which made me think and realise how blind you can be in your daily life when you are surrounded by the best you can wish for.