ohhhh markus ….

So I finally has my road test. Super early in the morning (met at 6:45). Then only thing I was afraid of was parallel parking. And oh well,it almost failed me. Got minus 30 points out of possible minus 30 just because of that.
But I have to admit there was a big difference between this one and when I took mine more than 10 years ago.
This time everything was electronic with barcodes and a small computer where the examiner keyed in all my faults. After the tests I immediatly got a small printout with my score and written explanation of all my faults. And now comes the most intriguing part,this small paper slip is also my preliminary driving license after the real one arrives in the mail. Total cost for this whole thing to get a driving license from scratch including office fees, lessons and the test was just $250.

so you need two things before you can go to the road test.

1. learners permit, enables you to practice
2. 5 hour theory course, aka “pre-licensing course completion certificate”

• there is no preferred lane (”driving on the most right lane”) if you drive on a multilane road
• but there is a preferred lane if you turn into another driveway on a crossing depending if you turn into a one way or two way street (this gave me the most headache so far) 
• there are many conditions when you can overtake on the right side of a car
• you can also turn right on a red light (but not in New York City, everywhere else you can)
• the highway speed limit is kinda ridiculous (55mph? wtf?!)
• you have to stop for a school bus on the other driving direction when his red lights are flashing, even when the bus is 6 or more lanes away and there is no way whatsoever that children would ever dare to cross that many lanes (people actually failed on that one during the road test)
• …

So it seems I will take a couple of driving lessons, to get the new rules “into my system”.

But the funny thing is, I guess its much harder the other way around. I can vividly imagine an american driving in austria, struggling with manual gear, always trying to turn right on a red light, using the most left lane on a highway and wondering why the cars behind him get so close ….

Since I plan to go to burning man this year (and my european driving license only is valid for a year here) I had to go through the struggle to get a learners permit from the DMV (and at some point in the future my drivers license. but first things first.)

The DMV (Department for Motor Vehicles, website is fugly, but excellent info and well structured) is around the corner so I went there during lunch break, not really expecting a long wait. Boy was I wrong. Huge line, probably 500/600 there. Fortunately the prettiest girl in the room was in front of me, wearing the shabby grunge supermodel look. Since I was right behind here in line, I started a little chitchat about this whole thing and we had quite some fun time. Talking about the Lifeball (since I am from Vienna) and this whole process and other stuff.

So the waiting time was (although long, about 1.5 hours) quite pleasant. Finally my pic was taken and I took the (easy) test. You only need to have 14 out of 20 questions right (my score was 20/20), but even so a guy in front of me managed to fail. And finally after another wait of about 30min I got my Learners Permit.

Now I am officially allowed to drive again (as long as there is another passenger with a driving license in the car)! yeah!

btw, later in the office I found out who I had this lovely chitchat with. It was Tiiu Kuik. (and yes, she has a boyfriend. big surprise.)

Internet Week started here for the first time, with an absolutely fabulous kick off party, hosted by Thrillist, music by Faux Punk, the best/worst/only Daft Punk cover band, visuals by VJ ValuJet and both were amazing! And after them only rock (&roll) music! fantastic! I was dancing like crazy, boy that was fun!

unfortunately the dance floor was covered in glass fragments from broken glasses, which made expressive dancing quite an adventure. I landed one jump exactly on a big piece, resulting in quite some pain, and I thought, ok, there goes my left shoe, but couldn’t see any hole to my surprise.

after arriving at home and removing my shoes, surprise surprise, the glass managing to stab me into the foot, causing quite a deep cut and some bleeding. What I don’t really get is, how can this happen without the slightest hole in the shoe afterwards (and its quite a massive leather sole). strange ….

what a lovely perfect sunny day. went to the queens pride 2008, gay parade/festival in Queens. totally low key and very relaxing. and fabulous (mexican) street food there (and free hepatitis a/b shots, good initiative!).

but ‘nough said, enjoy the pics

There has been a stabbing almost right in front of my door, just one block down. Everyone in the flat (besides me) was hearing 5 gunshots, silence, and some additional shots and then hell broke lose.

Tons and tons of police cars, detectives, fire trucks and other official cars were rushing into the area, I have never seen such an amount of police force and news teams.

Each online news site is posting a different story right now, as you can read e.g. here and here. Although both are maybe not quite right because Nunu and I have been interrogated by a very friendly police officer and he told us what happened first hand.

That a detective off duty with his girlfriend was getting robbed and he killed both attackers, being himself severely injured by stabbing (to the neck).

in the video you can see how the police officer gets an escorted transport to the hospital:

oh, and Nunu (yes, the Nunu) has been visiting me for a couple of days (as you can read here, here, here, here , here, here, and here), having a lot of fun.

Fabulous S dragged me to that barber shop in trendy Williamsburg Greenpoint. Dudes with tattoos, racing magazines and everything very 50ies. And the guy who is doing your haircut, rarely uses scissors, more like a electric razor, switching blades a gazillion times. And at the end I had … the most fabulous haircut ever. And no, I won’t tell where that place was …

oh, well, back in austria the New York festivals sounded always so glamorous, so prestigious. While this might be true for the award itself (high quality work there), its definitely not true for the ceremony itself.

They simply rented out the (small) Samsung flagship store and the whole thing was presented by someone who could have played easily a role in the stepford wives. Unfortunately I couldn’t get the false laughs and strange smiles on video, but here are some impressions and videos (I kinda pity the people who flew to NY from europe to get this award in person. what a waste of time).

Well at least I and the stepford wife had matching outfits. nice.

so we had again an interschool tournament, and this time I didn’t feel ready at all, waiting to the last minute to go there. Fortunately fabulous S persuaded me to go there so I went there and had a fabulous time, discovering lots of room for improvement on my form (although I got a 8.4, not that bad).

funny thing is, snoring prevented that the video of my form was recorded. how? well, our guest (yes, the one who didn’t hear the fire trucks and chainsaw action) is an incredible loud snorer. he was SOO loud that I recorded it, switching the camera to audio only (where the lens doesn’t extend at all and only audio is recorded).

and I (of course) totally forgot about it when I handed the camera to a friend to record my form today. since the lens didn’t extend and there was no visual feedback whats going on, he assumed the camera was broken, and couldn’t record a thing ….

here are some nice pics:

and I got kicked right into my face multiple times as you can see in the video. I was just too tired, not kicking at all and only playing defense. well, we all have those days. I am pretty happy that I went anyhow.

oh, and I got my nose broken (but already 4 days ago when a roundhouse kicked scratched my face during sparring. and luckily only the lower part got broken. but still …. ouch.)

imagine waking up on a saturday morning at 6:30am because of the massive noise of a chainsaw. aaaargh! since there is a construction site next to our house I was close to calling 311, thinking the source of the noise has to be them. but NO!

when I looked outside the window I saw to my utterly amazement THREE HUGE fire trucks in front of our building, and fire man cutting through the steel door of the shop below us, hosing down something with lots of water. apparently a machine or something caught fire.

but now comes the funny part of the story. I was the ONLY one in the whole flat who woke up. Even our guest who was sleeping right in front of the window didn’t wake up at all. The whole building could have burned down, ah, whatever, just let me sleep.

but the most funny thing is, that one of my roommates heard a mouse running around and woke up by that noise. of course thats A LOT louder than people cutting through a steel door with a chainsaw right below you ….