Lego...

I haven't played with Lego for about 20 years, however this changed as I browsed Amazon recently and found the new star wars models. I have always been a big star wars fan and having the millenium falcon as a lego model with over 5000 pieces switched me back to child mode and I had to buy it. Luckily I had two good friends who helped sorting and building ;) Enjoy the pictures....

[20080707] Millenium Falcon

Milan

Not many posts recently. Business makes me travelling a lot and I'm allways somewhere around India, Europe or the US ;)

Here some pictures from Milan.

[20080622] Business Trip Milan

Running Water

Yipppii! Finally they replaced the geysers and after more than two month I have water again in the master bathroom. Miracles DO happen :)

Bannerghata Zoo and National Park

Today I went with Florian to the Bannerghata Zoo and Nationalpark which is about 30 minutes away from Bangalore. We arrived about half an hour before they opened, which turned out to be luck. As we left about 2 ours later the line was approx. 400m long...

We had plenty of fun there although many of the animals have way to small cages. Especially the hipos looked really sad.

Talking about Hippos... there is definitely a "dirty job there". One of the guys was emptying the drainage for the hippo cage, removing all the hippo droppings by hand :)

After the zoo we took a short "Safari" (pictures) where we saw lots of bears, Lions and Tigers.

After the zoo we went to the Bay Leaf restaurant and had afterwards a nice evening at my house.

[20080501] Bannerghatta - Safari and Zoo

Paying the phone bill

Some things are way more complicated as in other countries. For example paying the phone bill.

I have now my bank account for some time and already registered for ePaying of the bills. However so far the bills do not show up there and I cannot pay via the bank account. So I decided to just go to their office and pay it directly. Arriving at the office they told me that it is only possible to pay bills below 1000Rs (25$) by cash. For bigger amounts you need to pay by check. So I went back home just to get told that the repair of the geysers will take another month, since there are none available. Well, already in a bad mood I went to work and tried to deposit the money for our phone bill, which turned out to be not that easy. With every deposit you can deposit a maximum of 10 bills in the ATM. Having more than 60 bills (the phone bill included internet for the whole year) that turned out to be a problem. Not only because it was cumbersome, no, because there were only 3 deposit slips available. So I decided to go to the main branch and deposit the money there, which worked out fine after I had to fill out another deposit slip and making a copy using manifold paper... A lot of stamps later I finally had deposit my amount.

So on monday I'll have to write a check and get to the phone office again...

Sightseeing Bangalore

Today Florian arrived and we decided to do some sightseeing in Bangalore. We visited the Bull temple, Forum Mall, Russel Market and Lal Bagh. Afterwards both of us were very exhausted and relaxed at my house.

Diving the Andamans 2

The last two days were filled with dives for my Advanced Open Water. It included a deep dive, Underwater Navigation, Underwater Photgraphy and Underwater Naturalist.

All dives were quite interesting and helped to feel more comfortable under water.

I was really sad to leave, because I met a lot of interesting people. The dive place was really great and the people there very friendly and helpful.

I'm looking forwared to go there again.

[20080409] Andaman Islands_Diving 2