Movie review - Ted

One Christmas, John wishes that the teddy he received as a present would be his best friend for ever and ever. That wish comes true and the next morning Ted is alive! Many years later, John (Mark Wahlberg) and Ted (voiced by Seth McFarlane) are still best friends but John's girlfriend, Lori (Mila Kunis), is starting to get tired of the boy who is easily influenced by his irresponsible best friend bear, and is waiting for John to become a man. Can the two remain *Thunder buddies forever*?!?

First of all, if you're a fan of McFarlane's other work (e.g. Family Guy), then you'll definitely enjoy this. If you're not...yeah, you might want to pass. I was a bit worried that all the funny bits would be in the trailer but there are some jokes that clearly couldn't be shown on TV. Basically, if jokes based on non sequiturs, stereotypes, swearing, sex, mental disabilities etc., this is not your thing. Having said that, because this is McFarlane's work, I did find it a bit distracting that Ted's voice was Peter Griffin. 

As much as the movie is about crude jokes and the humour in seeing a bear behaving badly, it is really about growing up and taking responsibility for your actions rather than blaming someone else - such as a bear. This is seen in different ways - primarily of course through John's behaviour, but also through Giovanni Ribisi's creepy dad who saw Ted on TV as a child and always wanted one for himself and his fat, spoiled son.


This movie is crude and vulgar, as expected from Seth McFarlane, but it's also a story about friendship and life. Fun and funny!
7/10

Dumpling disappointment

I'm still on my quest to find Asian food that I can't make myself. One of the items on the top of the list are dumplings, specifically shanghai dumplings and xiaolongbao. I found myself with a free-ish evening and I decided to try again looking for some xlb goodness. A bit of google later and I had a location to try out. 

WTF. THESE ARE NOT XLBS!!!

THEY SHOULD LOOK LIKE THIS!!!

WAI ARE THEY NOT IN A STEAMER?! WAI ARE THEY FRIED?!?! WHERE IS THE JUICY SOUP?!?!?

The mapo tofu was less disappointing but not enough to mask my pain.

Well, I won't publish the name and address of the place because I don't want to draw attention specifically to the place where I felt such utter, utter dismay. 

Fliegerbombe 2012

And here's a story that would never happen if I stayed living in Melbs.

In the Schwabing district, near the English Gardens and Muenchener Freiheit, there was a really scungy bar that I would often go to hang out in, usually with either Amy or my hombres Ruben y David. It was closed down some time ago and demolished. Yesterday in the construction site, a 250kg live bomb from WWII was discovered.

DA BOMB in situ! (Source)

This bomb, which I would like to call *Doodle Dandy*, because it was dropped by American forces,  apparently had bomb experts look at it and say "I'm not defusing that, I'm not suicidal!" The bomb was covered in strawa as a dampening device and a 300m exclusion zone was set up and it was set up and apparently there was chaos throughout the day because it's close to Leopoldstr., one of the major north-south roads in the city. 

It was eventually defused at 10pm tonight after everyone was evacuated and...I heard a BOOM from my apartment 4km away!!! Ruben who lives a lot closer says he's hearing a lot of sirens going along the street to the site! 

Video of the detonation!

Checking the local newspaper sites, Abendzeitung which had a live feed reports that buildings rocked, alarms are going off in the U-bahn, and buildings are on fire, with the below photo!

HELLZ YEAH!!! (Source)

But before you think Munich looks like this, it turns out that when the bomb detonated, the fragments and straw flew through the air and ignited the nearby buildings. 

So yes. That was the excitement of the day. I can't wait to get one of these t-shirts!

(For more photos, go to Suddeutsche Zeitung here. For the Abendzeitung feed, see here. English language article about the discovery, go here)

Hamburg Daytrip.

It turned out that both Michael and Janine would not be present at work on the last day I was planning to be there - Janine only works part-time and Michael was flying to Japan. Given that I needed key access to get to the lab I was working in, they decided I may as well also take that day off. Well if the people I'm working with don't want me to be working, then I will take their advice! And their advice was that I use the spare day to take a day trip to Hamburg which was 1-1.5 hours away by train (depending on how much you want to pay). 

I hadn't done much research on what I could do in Hamburg, only what I thought I could do in the 7-8 hours I'd allocated myself there. Unfortunately, after a week of pretty good weather, it finally turned shite and the plans of what I was going to do such as go to the Zoo (it was highly recommended), walk around the Old Town etc., were thrown into disarray. In the end, I decided to buy a day ticket to the U- and S-bahn and just make it up as I went along, weather permitting. 

The Hamburg Rathaus - I was duly impressed. Like the rest of Germany, Hamburg was bombed like crazy during the War  but the Rathaus was left intact as geographic landmark (aka bombing guide). 

This is for you, Pooey! Mmmm, burgers...


The Alsterarkaden...maybe it's the canal but it kinda reminded me of Venice.

On the topic of Venice, Hamburg has more canals and bridges than Venice and Amsterdam combined. I was going to walk through the Speicherstadt (Old Warehouse District), but on my way the weather thwarted my plans. Having said that, on my way to Speicherstadt, I walked through Deichstrasse, the oldest remaining street in Hamburg. 

The *street* side of Deichstr. 

And then you walk through this alley to get to...

The canal side of Deichstr!

Check out the contrast of old and new buildings!

Tourist trap or not, I decided to have lunch in a French creperie in Deichstr. The staff and some of the customers were French and I felt pressured to speak the language. For lunch, I had the *petit menu*, consisting of the galette of the day (ham, cheese, tomatoes and goat's cheese sauce), and a cup of French cidre. Das schmeckt/C'est delicieux!

During lunch, I decided that the easiest way to go through the Speicherstadt was to take a boat ride, similar to what we did in Amsterdam. To my amusement/bemusement, the ride not only took us through the Speicherstadt but into the industrial harbour itself!

The distinctive warehouses of the Speicherstadt on the right.

I don't know what that hot air balloon is supposed to be advertising. 

Big! Down on the canal on a day like this, it was actually really dark most of the time. 

A tanker out of the harbour. We also saw lots of other ships loaded with containers...

and things that I'm guessing are used to load the containers.

The new buildings of the HafenCity.

Fish market!

After getting off the boat and sitting in Starbucks for about an hour to recharge my phone (for internet) while drinking some hot tea, I decided to walk to the Elbe Tunnel. 

Pfft, why take the lift when I can photograph it?!

Cars waiting to enter the lift.

The tunnel. 

The sign indicating that I was half-way through the tunnel and 21m below the surface!

The view back towards the Landungsbruecken and St. Pauli on the other side. 

From here, I decided to head into St. Pauli and towards another famous landmark of Hamburg - the Reeperbahn red-light district. 

YEAH! The sun finally came out!

In one of the sexshops on the Reeperbahn, you could buy these caps and slippers with fluffy boobs and penises on them. Just what you need to relax in on a lazy weekend!

Herbertstrasse has a number of brothels and apparently the hookers will throw crap out of the window if they see women in the street. 

I didn't think they'd really do it (I didn't see any hookers in the windows) but at the same time, I didn't really want to risk it. 

The district is also famous for where the Beatles played before they got famous, playing in clubs along the alley, Grosse Freiheit.  Beatles-Platz is now at the corner of Reeperbahn and Grosse Freiheit.

Where you can kind this stylised sculpture of the band. 

A cash machine outside a pole-dancing bar on Grosse Freiheit, usefully letting you know what you need the money for. 

According to Wikipedia, Grosse Freiheit got it name from the fact that Catholics were allowed to practise their religion here (the rest of Hamburg is Protestant). That meant that after I walked past all the titty bars, I found this Catholic church at the end of the street.  

By now, time was running down and not wanting to have a quick dinner in on of the absolutely lovely looking establishments on the Reeperbahn (maybe being in Munich has spoiled me but I haven't been directly accosted by so many beggars in a while), I decided it was time to head back to the Rathaus and get some food near a cleaner tourist mecca of Binnenalster. 

Wunderschoen. 

And after a full day's walking and looking, it was time to head back to Bremen to pack for my return to Munich and cold hard reality. 

But being in Bremen wasn't all walking around and taking photos of architecture!

Since Bremen is close to the sea (well, closer than Munich in any case), I decided to try sushi again. The place I went to (Captain Sushi at the end of Boettcherstr.) was pretty good! It was staffed by Japanese people and I decided to return the next day to try out their sushi train buffet. On a normal day, the buffet is €33 and I decided that to get my money's worth, I would have to eat at least 10 plates. I ended up eating 13 plates but upon paying, I discovered that the day on which I rocked up was LADIES NIGHT meaning, it was cheaper than I expected! I wonder what the staff thought of my sitting there and just eating everything that passed though. Hehehe.

Here is some of the work I did which will not be described here. Just allow me to say that in terms of work, I found the trip to be very fruitful!

On the topic of fruitfulness, to get from my hotel to work in the morning, I had to pass these vending machines for cigarettes and various condoms and sex toys. The second one was a bit of a puzzle until I gave it a bit of thought - the hotel (and work) was also across the road from the University and shops in Germany are generally not 24 hours!

Bremen!

One of my fears about going to other cities for work is that I'd be all on my lonesome self. This was not the case in Bremen! In fact, on my very first (full) day there, I was asked if I'd like to have a short tour of the city and then go out to dinner with some other people who were clients/customers of the people I was working with - FREE DINNER!!! Sold! I didn't take any photos of dinner but I did take a few of Bremen. The pics were taken over different evenings that I was there.

Like many other German cities, Bremen is a lot smaller than I thought it would be (pop. around 600k!!!), but due to its geographic location, also different from other places I've visited so far. Being moderately close to the North Sea, I noted to my colleague/guide Michael as we rode the Strassenbahn into the Altstadt that the architecture style reminded me of Amsterdam, with the tall skinny buildings and the dark brickwork. He said that might be due to Bremen's history as a trading city and it being a Protestant rather than Catholic (cf. Bavaria), meant that it probably had more dealings with the Netherlands/Flanders compared to the southern/eastern parts of Germany that I was more familiar with. He also said the architecture may be different because even though it is much further north, the proximity to the North Sea means that it rarely snows in Bremen  it just rains a lot. 

Anyway, first stop on the tour - the Marktplatz which contains some UNESCO-listed sites.

The Gothic Rathaus and Bremer Dom.

Roland stands outside of the Rathaus, facing the Dom. Michael says this is because Roland protects the city from against the church.

These cafes and pharmacy look like they could have come straight from Amsterdam to me!

Opposite the Rathaus is this building, Der Schutting, a renaissance hall built for the Bremen merchants. Like many other things in Germany, it was destroyed in WW2 but rebuilt following in the previous style.

Ruining the period details of the square is this ugly building, which I guess is like the KVR in Munich. 

When I told people I was going to Bremen, the usual following statement was a question as to whether I was going to hang out with the Musicians. It was kinda hard to miss them actually - they were used as symbols on tourist things, labels for stores, amongst other thngs.

There's also a sculpture of them outside the Rathaus . Michael said you have to touch both of the donkey's feet for good luck! Touch only one of them and the next person can come along and steal your luck!

This girl is doing it wrong. I did it right!

There was also this drain in the ground - when you put money in, you can hear the individual animal sounds. I think we fed in about €0.50 so I could hear the animals! Oddly enough, Janine (another colleague) said her children love to do this when they go to the city.  Hehehe

Another thing to see is Boettcherstrasse. The street and buildings were remodelled in the early 20th century as part of an initiative by someone who had Nazi sympathies. Ironically, the Expressionist way in which it was done nearly resulted in the area being destroyed as an example of degenerate art. 

The entrance to the street.

The street follows old mediaeval route.

But while some of the buildings there still have signs of their original facades...

others are clearly more modern in style!

Other things I saw in Bremen were...

Piggies!

The city park.

This windmill (a restaurant) in the park.

Schlachte - the historic harbour  on the river Weser. Over time, silt made the river more narrow and shallow, forcing the harbour to close and Bremen to buy land further up the river and build a new harbour. 

I want to know why this tree trunk near Schlachte was painted white!

I also think this old building (a bank) looked pretty cool!

So yes, that was the result of a few evening's walks around around Bremen.