Highlights from a weekend in Manchester 28/29 May 2005

The new Bollinger La Grande Année 1997 advertisement quotes the novelist Victor Hugo: "As the purse is emptied the heart is filled".

Good advice from Hugo, but I didn't have to spend much this weekend to have a jolly good time in Manchester - apart from buying some champagne to celebrate Hani's finals (always a good reason) and cocktails at Yatra lounge (Old Bank Street, off St Anne's Square: an English version of the original Buddha Bar in Paris, which was rather lush - no prizes for guessing what dominates the walls - but fairly claustrophobic because of its small size. There was good sublime cocktails, relaxing del Mar lounge music, quite a fair number footballers' wives wannabes (reads: lotsa bling bling and shopping bags without the posh accents) and a more subdued cocktail-drinking male crowd) in town which at £6.50 each wasn't much different from London prices. Meeting up old mates for drinks and the simple act of catching up was very nice indeed. It's a shame one can't do this very often. I much regretted not being able to stay for longer, but I suppose there will always be other times.


View from Rif's apartment: my fav penthouse on the left.


(Doctor) Hani with my Laurant Perrier: we're celebrating Hani's finals.


You can tell the boy's a seasoned barman.


The boy trying to look stoned.


Rif making a point.


Fran needing a drink and Rif looking fresh from her AA class.


Home barbeque!


Hani's kitchen: 7.45pm, Saturday 28 May 2005. Fran rushing for the food. Rif standing guard.


Food!


Humus, salad, lotsa prawns and salmon.


Hani cooking for us all.


Yum yum.


Mmmmmm.


Affleck's Palace: Art deco.


Manchester city skyline.


Sorry, Andrea.


Rif with a cappucino.


Dutch flower market.


Sunday afternoon at Pure Space, Nico's ex-workplace.


Original post: Ingrid aka Chun Li; Karsten looking on looking bemused. Leo: "hahaha the pic of chun li and the perv is funny". Nuff said, Karsten.


Italian Mafia.


Rif's Marlborough reds.


(Doc) Hani thinking - reason enough for a pic.


Ingrid shamelessly misappropriating my pint.


Ingrid shamelessly stealing a sip off my pint.


Eurofestival: orange balloons sponsored by Easyjet!


The Sun! Hurrah!


The New refugees.


The painters.


Art anyone?


Bold lines. Fresh space.


Surreal.


Still quite surreal.


Time out for a pint.


Time out for some hot dogs with onions!


Karsten and Ingrid


My fav's the third from the right.


Breakdancing contest: the crowd.


Bryan (in white) taking a snapshot of the dancers.


You can tell everyone's glued to the set.

The Germans have done it again

Progressiveness.

It is particularly appealing that German politics is probably more progressive than at most other European playgrounds. Whilst the Japanese are still mulling over the idea of a female Empress, and the Swedes are happily creating a more level field for gender equality in their Riksdag (the Swedish Parliament, where half its members are female, despite a more dismal figure of 10% in the private sector's corporate boards), the Germans might actually surpass everyone's expectations if Schroeder (as I secretly hope) loses the elections.

Spiegel, my favourite German newsread with English translations, has this to report in a recent article (http://service.spiegel.de):

Paving the Way for a Governing Coalition of Social Minorities
By Charles Hawley in Berlin

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is in trouble. In a mess of his own making. Not because of anything he did wrong, but because of what he and his coalition partner did right. Together, they established a political atmosphere where a woman (Angela Merkel) and a homosexual (Guido Westerwelle) could soon take over the reins of German political leadership.

Germany has never seen an election campaign like this before. And not just because Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder -- suffering from disastrous approval ratings and rapidly dwindling support -- has called for early elections in order. No. In this campaign, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and his coalition partner Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer (although they have decided to campaign separately this time around) are going up against a possible alliance of Angela Merkel, leader of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and Guido Westerwelle, head of the Liberals (FDP).


Head of the Christian Democrats Angela Merkel has nosed ahead of the men in her party and could become Germany's next chancellor.

In other words, there is a very real possibility that Germany's next government will be a coalition between a woman -- who will likely become Germany's first woman chancellor -- and a gay man. And, in many ways, it is the progressive politics of the seven-year-long coalition between Schroeder's Social Democrats and Fischer's Greens that have made it possible. They are fighting against political opponents that they, themselves, helped to put there.

"I really think that the social atmosphere created by the (governing coalition of the SPD and the Greens) have helped to make such a constellation possible," says Ulla Bock, a professor of politics at the Free University in Berlin who deals with gender and minority issues. "The politicians who came out of the social movements of the 1960s really are the ones who brought these issues in to the center of the discussion.

"Homosexuality? So what?

Indeed, the Germany of 2005 is one in which homosexuality in public life is no longer an issue. When Westerwelle came out in July 2004 -- by bringing his boyfriend to Angela Merkel's birthday party -- the public reaction was the equivalent of a nation-wide yawn. The sexual preferences of Berlin's gay mayor Klaus Wowereit have engendered much the same response. And, in August 2003, when the right-leaning politician Ronald Schill attempted to blackmail his coalition partner Hamburg mayor Ole von Beust by threatening to go public with von Beust's homosexuality, the mayor went ahead and did it himself. Von Buest still sits in Hamburg's city hall. Schill, on the other hand -- in no small part because of his attempt to politicize von Beust's homosexuality -- was quickly dropped from the coalition and rapidly descended into political anonymity.


Guido Westerwelle, leader of Germany's Liberals, could be part of the next German government. Here, with his partner.

Women have likewise made advances on the political front, albeit on a much more limited scale. Until Angela Merkel took over as head of the conservative Christian Democrats in April 2000, a woman heading the party of Helmut Kohl was difficult to imagine. Likewise, Chancellor Schroeder's cabinet contains six women (of 14 total cabinet members), the most ever in a post-war German government. Much of these social advances can, of course, be put down to a general trend of social enlightenment across the European continent. But Germany is not traditionally progressive on social issues. Even today, women have a hard time breaking into leadership positions in the corporate world, ageism is rampant and unemployment among Germany's immigrant population is much higher than the average. Many of the advances that have been made, however -- and the potential political partnership between Merkel and Westerwelle --can be seen as a legacy of the governing coalition between the Social Democrats and the Greens."The German society after World War II just didn't have these topics on the agenda," says Bock.


Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder filled his cabinet with women.

Promoting social awareness at the highest levels

Much of the social conscience in the current governing coalition comes from the Green Party. Born out of the anti-establishment protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the party has always placed great importance on social questions and has made it a priority to maintain a more-or-less even split between men and women in the party leadership. The party has likewise been more active than any other on trying to open Germany up to immigration. The SPD, for its part, has also promoted women within the party and within Germany's bureaucracy through a process Schroeder calls "gender mainstreaming." In 2000, they passed a law guaranteeing equal treatment of all state employees.

Together, the coalition made a number of efforts to translate their progressive social principles into law. They introduced a number of laws that -- while falling short of allowing homosexual marriages outright -- went a long way toward providing gay couples with many of the same rights as married couples. The coalition also allowed for much-needed tax breaks for single mothers. And both policies moved toward a political redefinition of the concept of family. The government also attempted to break with entrenched skepticism about immigration by introducing comprehensive new legislation and have introduced the concept of consumer protection into the German political landscape.

The balance sheet isn't completely positive of course. There is still much progress to be made on gender equality. Many in the gay community would have liked to see homosexual marriage made law. And the immigration law failed catastrophically. And not all of the progress can be laid at the feet of the current government; already in 1993, Germany's high court noted that "same sex couples are faced with many hurdles in following their lifestyle and have many disadvantages relative to married couples," and that changes would have to be made.But, the coalition "has always focused more on such social issues as equal rights for women and other minorities, which is actually why they were voted in by many women and others," says Sabine Berghahn, a Berlin university professor who researches women's rights in Germany. "But by failing to live up to their rhetoric, (the governing coalition) has actually disappointed a number of voters."

More important, perhaps, than their legislative history, the SPD-Green coalition has made huge steps in instigating a public discussion on social issues. Especially during their first four years from 1998 to 2002, the papers were full of commentaries on gender equality, homosexuality, immigration and a myriad of other social issues. And while not all agreed as to how to approach such issues -- the coalition was often and viciously attacked from the right side of the political spectrum -- the attention meant that social questions were able to migrate from the fringe into the mainstream. As the political power of Merkel and Westerwelle demonstrate, that migration has continued directly into the halls of political power -- even within parties not traditionally known for their social awareness. And for that, they have their political opponents Gerhard Schroeder and Joschka Fischer to thank.

This EU shag

We all know that Labour is as divided as the Tories are over the European Union, which is why Blair decided to hide behind Brown's 5 economic tests for 8 years in relation to the euro. Mainstream Britain is, however, quite clearly in the "Non" group.

The EU would possibly be more popular (or less hated) if the great unwashed actually knew what it did. How can people engage in a process if they have no idea what the EU actually does? My first grouse with the British media is that it tends to cover the EU issue as a right/wrong issue rather than a left/right issue, a possible exception being the most recent debate on the European Parliament's vote to scrap a key opt-out clause of the Working Time Directive and changing the said Directive to limit the working week in the EU to an average of 48 hours; comments on the WTD issue to follow. The press of this country is also frighteningly biased against the EU and are happy to take an eurosceptic view that is at time aggressive but mostly, and unsurprisingly, nationalistic.

It is fair to say that if one wants a truly democratic community, then for a start one needs to respect the opinion of its citizens. But despite living in a democracy with press freedom, one tends to feel that the British public's nationalist sentiment springs more from the media's own euro-sceptic tendencies, rather than proper analysis of the european state of affairs at hand. Suffice it to say, whilst I am not terribly impressed by the British press, neither am I wholly in the "Oui" bandwagon (or at all).

So after a lovely weekend in Manchester enjoying the flowers, cheese and Heineken at a Dutch market at St Ann's Square and chilling out at the EuroCultured snapshot celebrations, I arrive back in London to read that the French voters have blown the "constitution" out into oblivion; constitution being a misnomer since it's really a consolidation, reiteration and restatement of the existing treaties.

There has been much bull spouted for/against it, and there's little need to go through the whole lot since the French have rather helpfully made the decision for all of us, but if there is one thing I do take issue with it is how some "Oui" commentators try to portray staying status quo as conservative and constitutional stagnation whereas accepting the constitution qualifies as progressive, a view that is better expressed as rather naive and patronising. And before anyone starts, I am neither Euro-sceptic nor Euro-phile. I take a more pragmatic view on things and have little fondness for extreme side-taking tendencies.

I do recognise the pivotal role that the EU has played in securing peace, stability and relative prosperity within Europe and its ever-changing borders, as was the basic idea in the original treaties. Team Europa has also much potential to do good for the world as it moves forward as a more confident player in the global stage.

But big is not necessarily beautiful. The mammoth that it is today has spawned an administratively burdensome and regulation heavy style of government that often inhibits commercial and personal laissez faire. It increasingly resembles an institution whose power exceeds its democratic mandate and which resists attempts to democratise.

Reforms are not necessarily progressive. Centralising power in the hope that the EU can improve is certainly not being progressive, particularly when allied with such clearly regressive measures such as support for a mandatorily limited working week and corrupt institutions such as the Commission. There is no objective case that the EU is capable of usurping the functions of national governments, or that greater power at European level will lead to better governance. The UK has a system which, for all its quirks and foibles, works reasonably well thank you. A reason which explains why the UK is, for example, one of three countries in the world without a written constitution - why fix it if it ain't broken?

Meet the Tuminator

Who would have thought? The Guv'nor has let himself go - muscle marys beware! (http://www.thisislondon.com/showbiz/articles/17554519?source=Daily%20Mail). Ps. Rumours abound that the picture of the man with the saggy (and hairy) breasts might not be that of Arnold after all, but the clever conception of an expert in the art of photoshop. One would have thought the Terminator-originale would have better taste in watches.

All in Good time

Coming home early for the first time in almost three weeks, I felt strangely fresh and invigorated. I've been starting to wonder if midnight walks home from the office (a mere 12 minutes, I ain't no masochist!) was how life was going to be like for the foreseeable future. Walking out of the office at half 6pm today and seeing daylight (and this being summer - almost!), it felt mostly awkward - as if I had somehow stumbled into unfamiliar territory.

Most (normal) people tend to think that leaving the office at 8pm would rightly be classed as a late night. I used to think so too. Obviously, I don't anymore.

8? That's early, mate.
9? Hmm, there's time enough to meet up for drinks at the bar.
10? Seems average to me.
11? I'm hungry.
12? Am I walking home or getting a cab?
1? I have a short chat with the Russian cleaner who comes in to clear my rubbish.
2? 5th cappucinno.
3? Yawn!
4? I'm leaving now. There's the 8.30am seminar tomorrow...

I suppose that's the undeniable wonder of conditioning for you. To be fair, work hasn't even been especially tough yet. I've not had the fortuitous opportunity to experience a one-nighter to date. And neither have I had to work over any weekend.

Everyone used to assure me that I would be swamped and wouldn't have much of a social life the minute I started work, on the premise that the trainees in firms like the sort that I'm in tend to work late. In fact, not just late but very late. When I first heard this, the naive me thought: "Well, what the hell? That's fine. I'm a night owl. Any time, babe... bring it on [insert petulant scoff]! And in any case, I usually leave the house around 10 or 11 anyway." Perhaps that wasn't the right thing to say on hindsight.

I've been working on two deals. One is due to be signed "sometime this week", but I'm not particularly hopeful as it was meant to be signed last Friday and the negotiations are still going on. The other deal that I've been working on was signed today, with as much fanfare as a fig leaf. And so with little more than four hours of sleep to keep me awake today, I was pleasantly surprised when three associates told me to "GO HOME!". Und so (all-time-favourite German "sentence connector"), I did.

On the way home, I was thinking about a typo (I know this sounds rather sad, but what the heck) in the minutes of a board meeting (of directors) which I had drafted late last night, misspelling the surname of a (apparently, rather large, American) director as "Lunch" (instead of "Lynch"). I was told this provided much hilarity and not a few chortles amongst the other directors to an otherwise boring meeting. Mister Lynch was apparently rather magnanimous in seeing the funny side to the (clearly innocent) typo and, probably resigned to a lifetime of fat jokes, proclaimed it was "not the first time". So anyway, there I was walking down a street, thinking about the incident, and (with all the geekness I could muster) started giggling to myself.

As I walked into the flat, I headed straight for the kitchen and looked into my fridge searching for food. My chilled possessions included:

1. a 1pt milk carton (full cream, thank you) which expired of course on 16 May 2005, unopened;
2. an opened packet of French crepes (filled with delectable hazelnut spread!), 4 out of 6 remaining;
3. a mid-sized pot of Onken biopot raspberry yoghurt, unopened;
4. a mini-bottle of Unagi sauce (marinade for eel/salmon);
5. a mini-bottle of Miso paste;
6. Japanese (sweet) mayonnaise;
7. Lurpak butter;
8. Raspberry jam;
9. some Milka chocolate from Vienna (present for mates in Manchester);
10. a bottle of Kriekbier (Belgian);
11. a bottle of Becks (German);
12. a bottle of Pilsner Urquell (Czech); and
13. a bottle of Laurent-Perrier (French, obviously).

So, basically, I had nothing to eat for dinner. Which on hindsight isn't too surprising, considering I eat my evening meals in the office almost everyday, either in the canteen (which is free) or getting some posh nosh delivery (billed to the client, of course).

And then I remembered reading in http://www.chambersandpartners.com/, a law student graduate recruitment guide, the concept of the trainee fridge: a few ready meals, a bit of pasta, lots of beer and no milk because you often won't be home long enough to use it before it goes off! If you're of the can't cook, won't cook school of eating, the canteen serves from breakfast time until late and there's even an onsite Costa Coffee. The kitchens on each floor of the office are filled with fruit, teas, and coffees (cappuccino, latte and espresso for those late nights). Add in free food after seven, free taxis home after nine, on-site doctors, dentists, opticians and masseurs and the reasons for the empty fridge become clearer.

Oh well, so there you go. It was pasta for dinner.

Gadget of the week: the power of bull-crap

I tend to age my bourbon in my ample gullet. However, if you wish to spend $29.95 on a massive magnet that realigns the individual molecules of your finest port, whiskey, or brandy, check this out at www.sylves.com/shooterbuddy/products.

Through the magic of the spheres, the Shooter Buddy will make any drink less bubbly and more better. Using the age-old vintner’s technique of powering heavy electrical fields near vintage bottles, the Shooter Buddy realigns “delicate magnetic alignment of the liquid particles.”

Bull-crap, non?


Shooter Buddy Jr. USD$29.95

One helluver week

1. Spilling gravy all over the sleeves of my work shirt on Monday over lunchtime in the canteen... at least I wasn't wearing my suit jacket.

2. Meeting Nico, his bro, his bro's girlfriend, and his bro's mate for a humans right lecture on Wednesday evening, having several pints of Grolsh and half of a Leffe, chilling at The Old Bank of England (http://www.fancyapint.com/main_site/thepubs/pub597.htm), and then having to go back to the office to finish off some work... at least it wasn't an all-nighter.

3. Discovering a vertical slit in my favourite suit pants, whilst wearing it, during an early morning seminar on Thursday... at least no one noticed.

4. Having a memorable 65-hours work week... could have been 100, mate.

5. Being too tired to go out all day Saturday... didn't have to go back to the office now, did you?

Zizek

Nico came to visit on Wednesday, straight from a 4 day sojourn in the Emerald Isle (the lucky bugger!) and fresh from all that Gaelic ale. We decided to meet up at an ICA-organised (http://www.ica.org.uk/), Slavoj Zizek lecture, held at The Great Hall of The Royal Courts of Justice.

The ICA had this to say about the fella: Slavoj Zizek, social theorist and lacanian psychoanalyst, has established himself as one of the most trenchant and perceptive critics of Western political culture at work in the world today. In the sumptuous Great Hall at the Royal Courts of Justice, Zizek will argue that, in their exclusive focus on the prevention of suffering, the Western doctrine of human rights evacuates politics and retreats back to the terrain of good and evil.

Zizek spent one and a half hours embarking on a somewhat dubious case against the universalisation of human rights, articulating a critique which focussed on the view that the enforcement of human rights through military and political intervention only serves to preserve those victims as victims, and prepare the way for continued violations of human rights.

Zizek is an eminent Slovenian philosopher and theorist and, as all eminent philosophers and theorists have been (perhaps unfairly) stereotyped, comes across as fairly eccentric. He is part of an esoteric cult of thinkers trying to popularise an all-too-cerebral view which is, on the one hand, greatly admirable and laudable in its underpinning meaning but is, on the other hand, rather fancy and lacking any sense of realism in its utopian ideals.

Which is well easy for any bystander to criticise, but Zizek's discourse was actually refreshingly animating. The man is admittedly a bit of a crackpot and he has a freakish style of public lecture which ended up being, I thought, a soapbox oration, the first 45 minutes of which was partly inaudible (or, rather, piercingly intense) and partly unintelligible as a result of a mix of reasons: the cavernous hall where the lecture took place, the drowning echoes from that and Zizek's booming voice, dreadful acoustics from a dysfunctional audio system, and Zizek's Slovenian grammar which took a few moments to get acclimatised with.

I was just about to think it was going to be the prelude to a lecture from hell when Zizek surprised with astute ability to observe the paradoxes usually imperceptible to most but are, in some cases, tricky issues to raise in this contemporary age of wannabe-political correctness.

Despite being renowned as a nonconformist maverick, Zizek's analysis contains no major thrust of significantly novel themes, but his somewhat salient charge against the notion embracing the universality of human rights is nevertheless noteworthy in identifying the point elucidating the Western capitalist biasness in such a notion. "Thus what Western liberals consider to be a conscience-salving progressive gesture, becomes, paradoxically, an instrument of oppression."

Undeniably admirable. But such an assertion is, whilst clearly predicating Zizek's vibrancy of intellectual thought, fails in pragmatic ignorance, attributable in part to the impetus that it fails to recognise the political realism and its dogmatic influence on world policy.

The primary reason for the US invasion of Iraq, repeated in numerous interviews, press conferences and speeches to the UN Gen Ass, and policy announcements was that "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction", leaving us with the indubitably clear notion that the US and its allies (the Coalition of the Willing, lest we forget) was morally (and, somehow, as their legal advisers had the moral tenacity to suggest, legally) right to invade Iraq because: (as copied wholesale from an interesting website: (a) "this is about protecting the American people" (from White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's statement to the press - he does not specify what Americans need protecting from); and (b) "Saddam was dangerous, and the world is safer without him in power" (from Bush's interview with Barbara Walters in 20/20)."

So when 20/20 asked Bush whether it was worth invading Iraq even thought the Coalition of the Willing could find no weapons of mass destruction hidden beneath the arid sands of the Iraqi landscape, Walters: "Now that we know that that was wrong? Was it worth it?", Bush goes: "Oh, absolutely". So there we have it. Bush still believes in his decision to invade Iraq despite Saddam's complete lack of a WMD program. It is this sort of steadfast adherence to his own (goofy, miscalculated) decisions that makes him out to either be a resolute leader or a stubborn fool, a fool that is nonetheless resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, DC.

Framed in this perspective, the Coalition of the Willing now finds itself left saddled with a somewhat distasteful job of refocusing the invasion on the grounds of human rights, ridding Iraq of an evil dictator and ensuring the spread of democracy in the Middle East, a goal which Bush and previous U.S. administrations are clearly very committed to. Quite ostensibly a false banner of hope to a disenchanted third world, that of an Uncle Sam in shining armour to rid unautonomous social regimes of their undesirable leaders, such a perspective is quite unconvincing. The existence of a pattern of convergent behaviour in many countries propounding the idea of human rights and regime change exemplifies the contention that human rights is undeniably a tool to be used by anyone in the world stage, the common denominator clearly independent of human rights enforcement as the real reason for invasion.

Design of the Week: Flipflops de Puma

If there is one name that seems to pop up at every turn whenever we're dealing with design, it has to be PHILIPP STARCK. Hot on the heels of Mihara Yasuhiro's Puma designs, Starck's highly evolved Puma sandals come in five colours: black, orange fluo, bleu, yellow and white.

Check out the website at http://starck.puma.com for downloadable monkey masks, unfashionable shoes, and a very flexible naked man in shoes. Hold onto any part of his body with your left mouse cheek and give him a good chiro session with a 360degrees stretch. Awesome.


Puma+Stark. Nuff said.

Boilerplate language: CoverYourAss

In view of the recent (sorry) state of affairs in relation to certain institutions threatening legal action on the basis of purported defamation on blogs, the following is a short (yeah fucking right) disclaimer WHICH PUTS EVERY READER OF THIS BLOG ON NOTICE:

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Do not play with fire.

Feeling the heat?

The FT last week had a rather interesting (and worrying) news article:

"A threatened libel suit against a blogger by a Singapore government agency has raised concerns among international press freedom groups that the city-state might be cracking down against dissent on the internet. A-Star, the city-state's science and technology agency, has set a deadline of Monday for a student who criticised its scholarship system and policies on his web log to make an "unreserved and sincere apology" or else be sued in what would be one of the first such cases in Asia against a blogger.

"Such intimidation could make the country's blogs as timid and obedient as the traditional media," said Paris-based Reporters without Borders (http://www.rsf.org), which last year placed Singapore at the bottom of developed countries on press freedom.

Chen Jiahao, a former government scholarship student studying chemical physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has already shut down his blog and apologised to A-Star and its head, Philip Yeo, for "having hosted or made remarks that Mr Yeo felt were defamatory to him and the agency that he leads". But A-Star said the apology was unsatisfactory since Mr Chen's blog contained "untrue and serious accusations against A-Star, its officers and other parties, which went way beyond fair comment".

International press freedom groups are watching the case since blogs could challenge the Singapore government's tight media controls. "We are troubled that the government has raised the spectre of costly legal action to chill commentary on the internet," said the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

Government officials have had a successful record of winning libel suits against foreign and domestic media critics in local courts. Singapore's "defamation laws make it relatively easy for some plaintiffs to win", said the US State Department in its latest human rights report (http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41659.htm) on Singapore. "Threats of defamation actions often persuaded newspapers and others to apologise and pay damages for perceived slights, a situation that prompted general caution in expressing dissent," the report said.

But A-Star defended its libel threat, saying it had "the responsibility to protect its reputation and also that of Singapore". The government is investigating another blog by a top government scholarship student in the US after he allegedly made racial slurs against Singapore's Indian and Malay minorities. No action has yet been announced in that case.

Blogging and libel laws are also emerging as a key legal issue in the US and Europe. Blogging has taken on more importance in Singapore as the government recently said it wants to encourage debate. "We want the people to be involved, to discuss, to understand and to have a view," said Lee Hsien Loong, the prime minister, last week."

Trip highlights::: Wien in a (little more than a) weekend (April28/1May)

Top Features

1. Coffee and a slice of Sacher Torte at Cafe Sacher: Vienna's most celebrated cafe. The "opulent furnishings" somewhat lacking and a female waiter who looked like the real version of Vicky Pollard, the redeeming feature of the Cafe turned out to be the very thing it was made famous for: the Sacher Torte, a timeless and quality composition of apricot jam with chocolate torte and a sweet velvety chocolate coating.

2. Goulash: no doubt the original beef goulash hailed from nearby Hungary, but the Viennese version I had at Kanteen and Kunsthalle was divine and certainly had me dreaming about on the return flight munching on the ham and cheese sandwich bought on Austrian Airlines.

3. The legendary Viennese Schnitzel: what else is there to say but that Schnitzel with massive helpings of tomato ketchup and thin greasy fries on a lazy Sunday afternoon is the way forward to a chilled out Austrian weekend.

4. The MuseumsQuartier Wien: in the heart of the city is one of the ten largest cultural institutions in the world. What is perhaps most impressive about the complex is not just the spectrum of fine art it houses but the way it was built to house modern and contemporary architecture and the eclectic way this is blended with the more traditional and historical highlights. Quite like IM Pei's glass pyramid entrance to the Louvre. The Wienese version scores by its unpretentious fuse of the Leopold museum, a bold structure epitomised by a black windowless basalt building, and crowd-friendly features that include al fresco bars and coffee houses, the psychedelic and very ergonomic pastel green Enzis dotted about monochromed and wide roomy courtyards. Livi and I had our first lunch at Cafe Kunsthall on Friday - a smallish but hip looking bar-cafe with a continuous, sweeping glass corridor running the length of one end of the Cafe, where we were sat to enjoy the view of the MQ courtyard. We were back the next day to sip on big cappucinos served in white porcelain soup bowls and Livi having lunch whilst myself gorging down a slice of yummyish chocolate cake, with Suzanna, Natalie and Lu. A relaxing precursor to the more exciting fashion show that was to take place in the courtyard straight after.

5. MQ fashion show: this year's fashion show was not too good. Well, I certainly hope it was better last year. The clothes were no great shake, the female presenter wearing what seemed to be last year's faux pas of a set of red polka-dotted pyjamas (and certainly needing a better hair stylist) and the models posing in rather stale and placid looking designwear. What was looking to be a 1.5 hours tedious affair of gawking turned out to be amusingly hilarious (but read further). The male models were generally average joes and although one pop startlet was looking quite fit, he managed to do just one walk around the runway before the point when we decided to leave. The young women were (perhaps unwittingly) providing most of the eyecatching moments. The inventive make-up on their faces could not, however, make up for the glaring lack of proper training in how to do the catwalk - most cats walk with more grace and charm than what I saw that day, but to my astonishment, this poor young woman was laughed at by the usually lacklustre crowd because she seemed to have very bad posture and a considerably comical walk. The whole ordeal, which must include the decision to have the female models dance on the catwalk, left me squirming and as Livi and I walked home, I was feeling extremely sorry for the young lasses.

6. WUK Kulturzentrum (Werkstatten-und Kulturhaus/Workshop and Culture House) is described in the Lonely Planets as: "many things to many people. It's basically a space for art ... International and local rock acts vie with clubbing nights, classical concerts, film evenings, theatre and even children's shows. H.A.P.P.Y., a regular gay clubbing event takes place here every second or fourth Friday of the month. ... along with a smoky cafe with a fabulous cobbled courtyard." So there we were in WUK on the fourth Friday of April, in the (not so) smoky cafe it being far too cold to drink fashionably in the courtyard, me tasting out some Austrian beer in the form of bottles of Wieselburger (my one regret from the Viennese trip was not tasting any Zipfer - quite a shame as every pub/bar had a Zipfer signboard out in the front, even if that meant it might have been beer for the plebs and despite the fact that I can probably find it at the local Oddbins in the UK), and subsequently moving onto the dance floor in WUK. The door cost us a cool 8 euros each, but we did end up with a pretty cute dinosaur ink stamp on the left hand and the cloak room was bloody cheap at one euro for both coats. What was supposed to be an established monthly fixture turned out to be a damp squid with a fairly non-existent crowd. The resident DJ was happy spinning pretty hard house, which is a refreshing change from the usual English cheese or German trance, and it was quite nice chilling with Livi's mates with the occasional dance moves whenever the music got a little out of hand. Susanna (Livi's good mate) wasn't too impressed by the music and I was more impressed by the size of the room (it was cavernous) and the dance moves of a bloke who was certainly doing quite well with all that space (show-off). In any case, we decided to move along at 3ish in the morning and the walk back home was surprisingly very nice indeed. It was lovely smelling the crisp morning air after a few hours of lung-infective recycled and smoky ventilation. I also had a dig at the alternative continental transport and got to try out Lu's bicycle. It felt rather strangely good to be cycling again after years of non-practice. We ended up having a late-night snack of Austrian hot dogs, but I could not finish mine. The vendor somehow decided I was going to have heaps of curry powder - which certainly would have tasted exotic to some - but no way was I going to be masochistic with the throat on a Friday night out with 2 more days to go in the lovely city of Wien.

7. The Chelsea: a pubby sort of bar just across from Livi's apartment in the Guertel, in the likes of indie pop and grunge, some alternative-looking clientale, the majority being rather studentish, and a small group of rowdy football/ice-hockey fans, was where we ended up on saturday night, following a very good asian treat at Chang (Waaggasse 1), where I stuffed myself with good taiwanese noodles, and a strawberry daiquiri at this very posh-looking basement bar next door.

8. Burggarten: is a small park near the Hofburg neatly tucked away from the echoing of strassenbahn and the noise of cars or the army of tourists from the main shopping district. Apparently, the park contains some very famous monuments, such as that of Mozart and Franz Joseph I. Burggarten in the late afternoon is one of the most beautiful places to go in Wien. People come to relax, sit on the very green grass, or simply to hang out with good mates. The occasional Austrian down to earth star sometimes pass by on their way to Palmenhaus or perhaps the nearby Opera House/town and on Saturday afternoon, we spied with (Livi's digital camera) the form of the two male artistes from a popular Austrian band whose album is (accordingly to Susanna) currently top on the German charts. Sunday being the lazy day of the week, we were sat once again in the park gorging ourselves on a big tub of delicious gelato ice-cream that Natalie generously bought, after our lunch of Viennese schnitzel (which came in the form of two large chucks of pork and a big smattering of thin crispy fries and, of course, loads of ketchup as described above). Not that it affected our ability to finish the ice-cream before it inevitably started melting under the hot summerish weather.

9. Austrian Airlines: the cheeky little bastards in management have, believe it or not, introduced what they call a "self select bistro service" except on flights above 1 hour 40 minutes in duration. This means you pay for all your food and drinks on board when travelling economy (!!!), which is bloody outrageous for an airline that continues to charge non-budget fares. The air stewardesses serve only a bottle of mineral water/tea/coffee and a mini (fake) version of what purports to be a neapolitaner (but it still ain't not the original Manner, darling!). I suppose this didn't enrage me as much as it would have had I paid the full airfare, since my e-ticket was redeemed using up 25,000 krisflyer miles. Even still, having to fork out 3euros for a pathetic piece of excuse for a ham and cheese sandwich of the smallest proportions was rather annoying. The only good thing I can say about the flights is that I was pretty glad that Austrian Airlines being part of the Star Alliance, I was able to skip the massively long check-in queue both ways by using my krisflyer card and walking straight up to the business class desk, which was literally empty - the reason being, as I later found out, that there was only one person sat in business class on the return leg (and none on the outgoing flight).

And that's it, folks.

In retrospect, buying a new pair of funky (retro) shoes, lots of Manners and chunks of Milka as presents for mates and the secretaries back in London, brilliant (aka hot and sunny) weather, an extremely nice weekend spent relaxing with a very good mate (and her very nice friendly mates) in Wien after years of lazily putting it off (sorry, Livi), ended up being surprisingly thereapeutic and a refreshing break away from the stress and grimness of London. Real regrets include, a much longer list but here's a succinct version, not checking out Shebeen (Susanna's favourite watering-hole), not stuffing myself more with Goulash and apfelstrudles, living in London in my small and expensive room-in-an-apartment, and not staying longer in Wien!

I really should start planning for my next trip.

Kunsthalle. Nice cafe for afternoon tea; good beef goulash; funky interior.


Neue Burg. Gothic looking structure. Notice the little boys on the rooftop playing with their sickle looking thingys (or just extra-big spanners).


Palmenhaus Burggarten 1010 Wien *533 10 33 * www.palmenhaus.at: you can definitely tell I've got a flyer.


My car. *I wish*


Livi's pretty pink shoes; psychedelic looking cobbled street. Feeling dizzy yet?


half eaten Sacher Torte; empty cup of cappucino; half drunk chocolat chaud; and some pistachio cake that Livi has hidden from (us) view.


Doesn't that look bloody cosy or what? I want a nice flat in London too! Shame that space is such a premium here.


Be careful, children. Lebensgefahr! (emphasis)


In the midst of Volksgarten. Lotsa arts students snoozing around trying to come up with a drawing of the pantheon-like building, or perhaps the very sexy life form of the sculpture.


Tourists. And a big fat block of concrete.


Hey whaddya know? A posing bird. Yeah right.


Grounds of the Hofburg.


Demel: Cafe Sacher's rival. Lots of Japanese tourists and old couples sat outside; fairly posh nosh.


Haas & Haas: posh tea house right smack in the city centre next to Stephansdom, Vienna's glorious Gothic cathedral and its beloved icon.


Lovely grounds of the Heldenplatz. Sunny day hoorah!


MQ: my favourite Viennese slogan. Notice the dot in the Q? I did.


Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwid Wien: I can read and write.


Enzi portrait: not mine, of course.


Cool shot of Livi.


Loving my polka dots.


Female model with inventive make-up making up her catwalk.


Run(a)way crowd.


James Dean in Livi's hallway. Prema: "hot, hot actor"


Funky bar just across from Livi's flat.


Pastel green Enzis this year: they were pink last year.


Lazing in the park.


Sisters.


The "lovebirds". Missing captions: "Single babe for date tonight: not out with bloke on my left" "Single dude for date tonight: not out with girl next door". What is that bloke in the yellow tee doing?


Susanna


Mattias


Gals in Guccis: Livi, Natalie and Susanna's flatmate.