so i'm back in the connected part of the world. not much of a wireless there in jamaica, but beautiful landscape, adorable climate and overtly friendly people. theiy're driving on the left, though, which is a little scary.
as this was my first ever resort holiday, i felt like a trapped cat when we arrived. and like a trapped cat i acted. i had myself relocated to another resort the very next day because of planes leaving the sangster airport which is right across the street of the mobay resort. they tell the people they should wave at the planes and kiss every time one has passed. but they were too loud for my taste, so i fled. to a town called ocho rios. beautiful resort, very caribbean, crooked structure but awful beach compared to the one in mobay. so the trapped cat effect kicked in once again, so i had myself relocated within the resort right away and after one night i obviously wanted to go back 'home' to mobay. johannes was sweet and enduring and undauntedly asked at the front desk if we could. well we couldn't for the next three days and that finally gave me the chance to stop running around in circles and have some real holiday. so we discovered the phantastic pool with the swim up bar and spent most of our days there. of course, when we were finally heading back towards mobay, i had gotten used to everything in ocho rios and i didn't want to go any more, but we went anyway, because i didn't really dare to ask for any more readjustments. and, after all, i love to be chauffeuered and it was a beautiful 2 hour trip. i took some pictures on this trip, but missed two sujets i had spotted on our way to ocho rios. one of them was this awesome rastafari sitting in a huge excavator, such a gorgeous sight. pity i missed it.
well, back in mobay, the planes were still a nuisance, but i was determined to wave this time. this poor little cat had finally decided to give up the fight and enjoy resorts. resorts are great in some respect. you get fed a lot, all the drinks are complimentary, and this one was a couples only (i just loved it, back in apopka at the altamonte mall, i couldn't help but think just how great it would be to have couples only malls, too), and they have super cool workouts and gyms. i fell in love with an elliptical workout device, some days i would even use it twice for my quickly developped half hour fat burning routine. i need to get one of these at home, it is fun and the results are striking. instead of getting fat and lazy from all the food, i even felt trimmer and had more energy at the end of our jamaica visit.
and end it did.

good news is: no cold, bad news is: no wireless on the hotel room.
it proofs to be rather difficult to do the performance here as planned. so far, we only did it at aqua art and we hope to do it over at the art basel today, which is gonna be a real challenge. i bought a new bag to be able to get all the stuff johannes needs inside past security. but i'm sure, we're all gonna have ourselves thrown out in no time as soon as he wears the suit. i'm glad, i did not end up wearing one of these suits, too - as originally planned. i've ended up as the official photographer of bode media (sean bonner's company) and the woman dispensing the press passes made a big fuzz over the fact that i wanted to take pictures. now i have an official permit that i need to 'carry at all times' because else my cameras might be confiscated. she even argued that it was also not possible to take pictures at 'le louvre' which is bullshit as far as i remember. i took pictures inside the french museum 10 years ago, you just can't use the flash. bigh deal! but i did not tell her that of course, I was not in for an argument with the Swiss.
what i found out about photography so far is that it's never gonna be a real passion with me. it's just another job i struggle to be good at, because i hate not being brilliant at whatever i do. what annoys me about it is that i've started thinking in pictures - which adds another layer of detachment between the world and me, as if i weren't detached enough already. for me, the camera provides an extra wall to hide behind, i'm good at hiding from the world.
what i love about the job is that usually people think you are really important if you carry a big enough camera. the camera seems to say 'obay!' and most of the people act accordingly.
bottom line: i love being important and distant, so i love taking pictures. but i'll never get past the impression that photography is a downright boring medium with too many technical limitations. my heart will always belong to language.
anyways, you can have a look at some of the pictures i took yesterday here.

that was not just a window seat, that was the emergency exit seat, that's like having a garden on the plane.
so, i still love airports :D

i love airports. maybe not so much when it's that early but basically i do. weird though, that they didn't give us seats when we checked in. if they don't give me a window seat, i might consider to stop loving airports. even if that has nothing to do with each other.
i'm afraid i might have caught jake's cold, my nose is running. i've been on aspirin ever since the roboexotica, maybe now's the time it does not work anymore. maybe this alleged cold will save me from being sent to prison in miami...
anyway, the plane will leave at 10.40. bye bye vienna.

The Movie Of Your Life Is A Black Comedy

In your life, things are so twisted that you just have to laugh. You may end up insane, but you'll have fun on the way to the asylum. Your best movie matches: Being John Malkovich, The Royal Tenenbaums, American Psycho

i totally agree with the tenenbaums, maybe with malkovich, but american psycho? i ran out of the theater during this movie!

as far as i am concerned, the nestroy was a flop. i made the wrong decision about what to wear, went for an ally macbeal like suit which was all too businesslike. and i even put on some makeup which i usually never do because of my contact lenses. so there i was, all dressed up and ready to be on tv. anyway, i shouldn't have bothered, because 20 minutes before the show started, we were told that we were not going to be on the stage.
these sudden changes of plan really bug me. to be happy, i need information to rely upon. also, nobody ever told me that after the show we were to go to the beautiful city hall, so i had squandered my one picture of the day (i am supposed to take one a day only) on something else and didn't even bother to bring the camera. gosh!
then, everyone seemed to ignore us, i didn't know why. but i've just figured it out. johannes has had some serious haircut lately, and so probably noone even recognised us. or whatever.
well, let's concentrate on the positive: we have one third of a nestroy award. we got free food and drinks. and the quote of the day is
"Amor war kein Stockerauer".

i'm watching a very old austrian movie (1956) starring michael heltau who will be awarded the nestroy (lifetime achievement) tonight.
in this movie, he just declared that he would love a woman (clearly out of reach) forever and he was just given this piece of advice i'd like to share:

we use words like forever due to a lack of words for the exorbitance of love. but we are well capable of loving forever several times during our lifetime.
________

same topic, striking question:
if you would have to decide between loving someone or being loved by someone, which would you choose?

the francesca has left for london. i feel so alone. within days she has become so very dear to me. as a friend, as a mentor, as my little nova scotia girl, and as a save haven in times of madness. to us girls, monochrom can be a hella hostile environment at times and together francesca and i managed to work out ways of dealing with that. i miss our comfy zones and our talks. which is why i made johannes reschedule our flights. we'll be home one week earlier so that we can celebrate christmas with francesca.
the jake has left, too. we had such a good time. i even enjoyed taking care of him when he was ill because it gave me the perfect pretext to skip the trip to linz and i didn't really wanna go anyway. he is such a darling. to make sure he will come back i took a hostage, his favorite camera! and this is not just jake somebody's camera, it's jake appelbaum's, the guy who can make MY nose disappear!



tonight the 'nestroy award' show will take place at the volkstheater. i'm still kind of bitter about the fact that they didn't actually give it to us but to the rabenhof theater who will get it for the maschek's 'television swindle', the play 'freundschaft' and for our musical 'udo77'. so maybe i should try my newly developped skills of killing emotions on negative feelings also and just get over it and have a good time. i still have to decide on what to wear, the dress or the suit. after all, it'll be on tv. any suggestions?

i forgot to tell you that today is the first anniversary of my masters degree final exam.

on tuesday, jake and i went on a trip to budapest. i was stunned about how americanized hungary has become. they have kfc, pizza hut, the abominable mcdonald's and burger king, and even more hard to believe, you can buy mountain dew there! at the gas station! the only thing that was not to be seen is the taco bell, but they just seem to stick to the US never wanting to come out anyway.
jake gave me one of his cameras and i took something like a basic course in photography. we'll see if i am a worthy student as soon as i have the film developed, because yesterday i already had to jump into the cold water. i took several pics at stefan's lecture about tarzan in the monochrom project speis. we'll see. jake took some amazing pictures of budapest from one of the surrounding hills. as it was dark already, i didn't even try. instead, i tried to keep myself warm to some extent. the temperatures were way below zero and jake caught a terrible cold which is why he couldn't join johannes to go to linz today.
the fact that cory, who was staying in the blue room before jake, also was ill, makes me feel guilty about not changing the blankets (i just didn't have the time to wash and dry the stuff in time). so how long can germs and infectious bacteria survive in a cold guest room? if the answer is 'up to 12 hours and longer' i think i have to say mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
if anyone feels like forgiving me, please go ahead.

i can't believe how good i've become at killing my emotions. i can be totally excited, learn that this might not be such a good idea, suffer for two days, and be over it on the third.
amazing and terrifying at the same time.

roböxotica is over. i gave the atkinses a ride back to bratislava airport yesterday. when i fetched them on monday, jake was coming along and told me the short version of his intricate family life which was so intense that we missed an exit and ended up in hungary first. he didn't mind, though, because it meant that he got an extra stamp for his passport (men always seem to collect stuff rather than to get rid of it) and we were still in time anyway.
this time, i took the right exit and so alice is probably back home in london, whereas cory went to geneva. bye bye you two and do come back!

[my laptop somehow does not upload jake's pictures, i'll have to do it at the office]


yesterday was terrible. melancholy all over the place. we all cheered for franky's robot, though, which this year was really working for the first time and he got the acra (people's choice) for it.
i somehow forgot to eat (cocktails don't count) and when we finally headed for dinner my blood sugar was so low that after eating it took another hour to get me back to live. i wonder if i'm the only one in the world to be so sensitive about food intake, but not eating properly really kills me.

since alice and cory left, jake has taken the blue room. he's still asleep though, the boys had a long night at the closing party.

anyway, i'm heading for the gym, trying to get rid of all the roböxotica side effects.

yesterday i gave jake a little makeover, very 'what not to wear'. the guy had no idea just how crappy he was dressed from the waist down. and that combined with his stylishness from the waist up...
i took it to my heart what trinny and susannah keep saying on their show "you need to be cruel to be kind". so i was cruel and told him.
he defended himself, though, by saying that as a 'photographer' (airquotes), he had to get down on his knees a lot. totally fine with me, but it does not naturally imply that all your trousers and shoes should look like freshly recycled from other people's garbage bins.
and so he would buy new trousers and new shoes (shoes with soles! why would people wear shoes that basically look like tieable slippers?) and he also fell for a pullover (v-neck) that makes him look very 'streberhaft' (i don't think this translates to english). and today he is even having his hair cut, but that has nothing to do with me, i thought his hair was totally ok. really. totally.

did you ever have a bunch of guests that were all on different diets? the toughest ones to make happy at the same time are the vegetarians and the atkinses, obviously. so if you happen to know places in vienna that serve good veg and good meat only stuff, please let me know. oh yes, if possible somewhere near the MQ.

dear reader!
if you would also want to see top notch pictures of what's going on in my life at the moment, please also check out jake's blog



it's the ususal monochrom mega event madness at the moment. i am not really able to make a good choice of what to write about any more. i think all i can come up with at the moment is a list of names:
francesca
alice
cory
jake
david
kal
and paul's on his way.

alice and cory - both on atkins - are having wurst at some restaurant nearby, which gives me time to blog a little. but that's about it. as soon as i get on my way to the MQ it's chaos dippin'.
yesterday i got so grouchy in the evening, i had to take a break. so i grabbed the atkinses and took them home and made them watch one of my favorite shows. a bavarian court show, 10 years old and hilariously funny. of course, they didn't get a word, but since everyone had their notebooks on their laps, i think it was ok. cory seems to be a little ill, though. gesundheit!
my cell's ringing, it's cory. sorry guys, gotta go...

if you want to keep track of what's going on in my life, may i suggest you read francesca's blog for the time being. it's roboexotica, and we have like 10 guests and i don't really have time to blog right now.
francesca is our artist in residence from toronto. almost immediately she has become a very good friend, too. meet francesca:

gestern saß ich vor dem fernseher und schmachtete. es war sex and the city und zwar eine big-folge. und ich lieeebe big. mein schmachten jedenfalls hatte zur folge, dass mich johannes fragte, warum ich denn mit ihm zusammen wäre, wenn ich doch eigentlich big wollen würde. das ist schnell erklärt.
zuerst die gründe, big zu lieben: big ist attraktiv und charmant, witzig und klug, reich und heterosexuell. aber
um einen big zu kreieren bedarf es in wirklichkeit ja mehrerer beteiligter. man braucht
1. einen gutaussehenden schauspieler (der vermutlich leider eingebildet und dumm ist)
2. einen klugen und witzigen drehbuchautor (der vermutlich leider nicht besonders gutaussehend ist)
3. einen reichen produzenten (der vielleicht schwul ist und auch leider gar nicht charmant)
und dann noch
4. und 5. kostüm/maskenbildner und kameraleute etc. die mit einiger sicherheit nicht besonders reich sind.

dann kommt natürlich noch dazu, dass sich so ein big - fiktiv hin oder her - sicher nicht mit mir abgeben würde, sondern nur mit einer waschechten carrie. oder noch schlimmer: einer natasha, die weiße kleidung tragen kann, ohne sich zu bekleckern! und um eine carrie zu kreieren bedarf es wieder einer ganzen meute leute (drehbuchautorin, schauspielerin, produzentin, kostümbildnerin...you get the idea).

im wirklichen leben kommt es also darauf an, welches fünftel big sich in welches fünftel carrie verliebt oder umgekehrt. ich für meinen teil, gefragt, welches fünftel ich auf die berühmte insel mitnehmen würde, würde mich ohne zu zögern für den klugen und witzigen drehbuchautor entscheiden.
außer vielleicht, die insel wäre manhatten. da müsste ich dann kurz zwischen autor und produzent schwanken, weil der reiche produzent natürlich ein schickes penthaus in manhatten besitzt und ich ja schließlich keinen wildfremden mann zu douglas und amy mitbringen kann. und die hotels in manhattan sind so schrecklich teuer...

es ist ein elend, dass sich die radieschensaison schon wieder dem ende zu neigt.
gibt es ein land, in dem ich ganzjährig knackige radieschen zu attraktiven preisen im gemüseregal der supermärkte finden kann? dann will ich dort hin. ich könnte täglich 24 oder sogar 25 radieschen essen und alle würden sie mich glücklich machen.

könnte mir einer der werten bloggerschaft vielleicht einen tipp geben, wo sich die einstellung, die die großbuchstaben in der überschrift festlegt, befindet?
weiß zwar noch nicht, ob ichs ändern werde, aber ich möchte wirklich wissen, wo ich das tun könnte.

weil wir schon bei verona feldbusch sind. das mädl hat ja neulich in wien geheiratet. das war auch im fernsehen zu sehen. und ich hab den ein oder anderen bericht darüber auch mit durchaus wohlwollendem interesse verfolgt. das ereignis war als perfekte märchenhochzeit angekündigt und beinahe war es das auch. warum beinahe? ich wusste es selbst nicht gleich und musste ein wenig darüber nachgrübeln, was denn nun das störende war. und darüber bin ich ganz nebenbei auch auf die erklärung dafür gestoßen, warum märchenprinzessinnen generell im aussterben begriffen sind. schuld ist nämlich der tonfilm. und der journalismus. yep! beziehungsweise die fatale besessenheit der medien/macher/konsumenten mit meinungsabsonderungen von gottunderwelt.
nochmal zum mitdenken: wenn nicht ständig alle zu allem ein interview geben müssten bzw. würden dann würden das alte illusionsmedium tv uns nicht völlig entzaubert mit dämlich kreischenden möchtegern-märchenprinzessinnen befremden.
oder ganz kurz gesagt: hätte sie nur den mund gehalten wär sie märchenprinzessin geworden.