June 2004 Archives

This weekend was great. Not only were there great house parties on both Friday and Saturday nights, but these parties were in my district for once, within walking distance of my apartment, something that has never been the case in all my years of going out!

Friday night Nora had a party at her house which was really great. When I left (around 2:30), I decided to walk home instead of waiting for the night bus and taking it for three stops. Granted, my apartment is within "walking distance," but it took me thirty minutes!

Saturday night Oliver had a party at "Casa de Veith" which was also great. Once again I also stayed until around 2:30, but this time I took the night bus and was home in ten minutes.

Tonight I met up with Jakob, Monica, and Thomas at Lukas a bit and we watched the second half of a soccer game. I was home around 11:45.

Heh, notice how all my Vienna weblog entries are about what I do at night, and not about what I do during the day? That's easy to explain: I don't do anything at all during the day but sit in front of my computer. And I rarely get up before eleven, so there's even less time anything to happen.

Saturday I did do something during the day. I went to the yearly open house of the public transportation network in Vienna. They had some nice things to look at, so that day is worthwhile mentioning. I mean, it's not that I wouldn't do something during the day if someone offered to do something with me... But I guess a lot of people are also on my kind of daily schedule.

Oh, and in case you haven't noticed there's a comment link below every entry of mine! Everyone always tells me "I read your weblog all the time." Well, if you don't comment on my entries, I won't believe you.

Tuesday night I hung out at Barbaro with a bunch of people. I talked to this Austrian girl who not only knew where Syracuse is but that we have a great basketball team. That was a surprise.

Last night I met up with Kerstin and Thorsten and we went to a total of three places in the 19th. It was pretty fun. Andrej, Stani, and Atanas ended up joining us.

Today I finally got cable internet. Seeing that the internet is essentially my life, this addition is great. The installer guy was really cool too. He's like the kind of guy that gives you all the TV channels for free, and then says "I didn't do it! I don't know you, OK?" He fooled around with my dad's PC so that it now has the same ethernet ID as my Powerbook, so that he can use the connection too. Because the company here wants to make you pay extra for activating additional computers.

Last night I didn’Äôt do much. I drove up to Thorsten’Äôs house and watched the Sweden vs. Bulgaria soccer game, and then drove to Heldenplatz, where I laid on the lawn for awhile with Jakob and Monica. We then went to ’ÄúDas Donau’Äù which is this really strange bar-type thing in a former synagogue. Yep, that was that night. Thorsten told me there’Äôs going to be some huge party tonight, so that ought to be fun.

Tonight was a very short night and I was home by midnight. I went to Flex and watched a European Cup game outside with a few friends and then went to Lukas for a bit.

I just saw the craziest movie. It’Äôs called Luna Papa, and get this: It’Äôs a Russian/German/French/Austrian/Swiss movie filmed in Uzbekistan. This seventeen year-old girl is raped and becomes pregnant. Her dad drags her and her mentally challenged brother across Uzbekistan looking for the guy who impregnated her. They’Äôre not successful. The daughter meets a guy from the Red Cross and saves him later in the movie when he is about to be killed by the mafia. He agrees to marry her as a thank you.

However, as they are about to be wed, a cow falls from the sky and kills the father and the groom. A week or so later the daughter overhears a pilot tell a story about how he had to throw a bull out of his plane because it was destabilizing it. She confronts him and it turns out that this guy is the father of her child. She is confused as hell and grabs a gun and shoots at him, which causes him to go into shock and fall into a coma. The people of the town have already been hateful to the girl and now they chase her out of the town.

Up until this point the movie is still somewhat realistic’Ķ Very coincidental, but realistic. But the last scene features the girl climbing onto the roof of a building and her brother short-circuiting the ceiling fans below her, causing them to spin so fast that she lifts off and flies away.

It there is one thing I hate, it’Äôs movies that are realistic throughout but then turn to fantasy in the last second! The movie was really well made until this point and it seems like they just ran out of creativity, money, or both and came up with this cheap ending.

With the exception of the last fifteen minutes and of course a few scenes throughout, the movie is hilarious. It has all the stereotypical USSR stuff like animals in planes and such.

Let's see...

Thursday night I hung out with Thorsten and Kerstin, who's back from England. We just drove around and then hung out at Kerstin's house for a few hours.

Friday night I took public downtown and ran into a few people at Lukas.

Last night I went to go see "The Punisher" with a few friends and then we went to Merry Monk.

Otherwise I've just been sitting around during the day and have been messing around with my web site.

I've been at my dad's office a few hours today... Mainly so I can use some T3 internet. We're getting cable internet installed at home in like eight days, which will be great.

I've just spent over an hour back-archiving my weblog. Sad thing is I only managed to finish a week's worth. I posted so much in August, 2002, that it's taking me forever. Not to mention a lot of my posts back then were pretty depressing, so they are depressing me right now again. That happens to me every time I read my weblog entries from months/years ago. Even if the entries were positive, they depress me because I look back fondly at those years!

Anyway, I'm done with that for today. I'm back to August 18, 2002... My first entry was December 29, 2000, so I still have a long way to go! When I get done I want to publish it as a book... It'll probably be over 500 pages, especially since by the time I get done back-archiving I'll probably have another year's worth of new entries!

Outside

Another AIS event disappointed me tonight. I mean, after-prom has never been that great, but the End-of-the-Year Quarry!? Come on! There was a lot of bad luck involved though too. Check this out:

For at least the past three days the weather has been great. Today it climaxed this afternoon around three when the temperature exceeded 30¬ƒC (86¬ƒF). I was really in the mood for a good time tonight. I packed up some stuff, did thirty or so pushups so I would look all nice and buff, and was about to hit the shower when I took a glimpse outside. It was pouring. Luckily it stopped after about twenty minutes and I began to get my hopes up. I mean, sure, the field would get a little wet, but it wouldn't matter too much. I got in my car and started driving up around nine. As I neared the into-Vienna-incorporated village of Sievering, close to where the quarry is, raindrops splashed through my sunroof. I was on Agnesgasse, the connector street between Sievering and Neustift am Walde, another wine-producing area of Vienna. The rain picked up and about twenty or so American-English-screaming students ran by towards Neustift. That's when I realized that just as last year, this would be another indoor quarry.

I decided to meet up with a few friends in the ninth district for a bit, but then drove back to Neustift with Thorsten around eleven. It was as if a quarry was taking place in the middle of the street... Students where everywhere. Thorsten and I went inside the Wolff Heuriger and saw that only a handful of people where left inside. What had happened was that, just as last year, students had gone inside and turned this charming, formal, quiet place into a raging quarry. They had brought they own liquor and had caused a disturbance. The staff had stopped serving everyone alcohol and so everyone had gone outside or tried a neighboring heuriger, the staff of which also kicked them out.

At midnight two cops showed up outside and everyone, with the excepting of myself and two or three other people, ran in all possible directions. What a scene! You thought you were watching a drug bust or a Syracuse bar raid!

Inside

I went back inside for a bit but then we all left shortly afterwards. Outside the group had reconvened and was now hanging out a little further up the street. I then drove Kenneth and Thorsten home and then, on my own way home, passed by Neustift again. Those kids were still standing there! Wow, what a horrible quarry.

You can watch a short ninety-second video that I filmed/edited tonight here

Saturday and Sunday night I hung out with several people from my class, mostly at Lukas, although Saturday night started in Neustift am Walde. Both nights were up to my expectations.

Tonight, despite it finally being really warm out again and the fact that there tons of people downtown, no one I knew was there when I checked it out. I ended up playing pool with Thorsten and Oliver for a bit in Heiligenstadt.

I have to get up pretty early this morning to try to work myself into getting checked out by a doctor for my ongoing pain everywhere. I’Äôm still going to get a lot more sleep than last night though, because I got home around two and had to wake up around five to drive my mom to the airport.

Yeah, I was a little lazy at posting the past week, but you didn't miss much. It was a rather boring week.

Last night was pretty good though. I went to the graduation of the AIS Class of 2004 and then the subsequent after-party. I got home at 5:45 and it was a good time.