I read your blog entry...

The more I read other people's blogs, the more I freak out. I'm freaking about the kinds of friends I have:

suddenly, a tough-guy I know for his confidence and "bring it on" style reveals himself a gentle poet slash crybaby; a girl with a world-renowned smile reveals a heart more tormented than a fat man doing bodyPump(TM); and a colleague known for a clear head and analytic standpoints churns out blog entries slaloming between obscure new-age music discoveries and contemplating suicide. Guys, let me just ask you: why don't you tell us these things up front, so we can help? Is it because of the conviction that no-one reads your blogs anyways, so you might as well, or because you somehow feel these things so embarrassing that you'd rather give it to us in writing, and then shut your eyes and hide behind a pile of coats? The thing is, if you write it in your blogs, it's kind of public. So from now on, beware. I might just throw in a question about your foot fetish, just *bam* in the middle of the small talk you seem to prefer when you're not around your computers.

In Zürich.

Ok, so dead flies is dead. It wasn't "the people" who killed it, much the way it wasn't really "the people" who killed typewriters or good taste; they just got replaced by cooler things like computers and MTV, and left with their heads hanging.
Ok ok, so I admit it, the fact is dead flies died because I killed it. But I have an excuse, which is that recently, my life has been reduced to sitting at home with my shirt off, either working on my thesis paper, or watching TV while drinking liters of "high C" orange juice, only to use the empty cartons as projectiles to hit the channel change or volume adjust buttons. While engaged in such deliciously duotonous (as in, paradoxically, two times monotonous) activity, I would sometimes drift and slumber, and before I would wake myself with my own hideous first snore, I would dream of those times when my blog got tons of visitors, with enough third-party comments to actually bathe me in the illusion that people were actually, God knows why, taking their time to read my absolutely random rantings. So in this second before the snore, I made up my mind, however childish and insignificant it seemed, to strike a blow towards whatever my blog represents by again blogging something. And while this post seems to demonstrate that you actually CAN make something out of nothing much, it also demonstrates that that something then, due to the infinite justice at work in the world, actually ends up adding up to nothing much.

Rümlang Bodyflying

Paris... one more time

It breaks my heart to see the counter on my page creep up, while the number of weeks since I haven't posted just keeps increasing. It seems like a pyramid scheme doomed to fail in the long term. To keep all those dead flies fans alive, here a few commemorative "good-bye" snapshots of Paris, courtesy of Marc's telephoto lens.

Bretagne!

Continuing a dear dead flies tradition, the computer ate this post the first time I wrote it.
So I wrote it again, because I know that the computer likes seconds.

Ah yes, the little squares of Rennes, teeming with life, booming and echoing with thousands of chatting denizens who should actually have been hard at work in plastic-and-steel cubicles, improving France's disappointing first-quarter GDP figures.

After Rennes came the first true highlight of the trip: Le Mont St. Michel; the approach was designed for maximum effect, with the majestically towering fortress throning over the landscape from miles away... the parking lot gets flooded every high tide, so we kept our cars under surveillance from the many small windows of the monastery. Interesting note: the very top of the Church was finished in the 20th century and added via helicopter.

Inside, a surprisingly serene atmosphere...

the monastery hall..
...the visit effeting our entourage to the point that they reenacted the dead WWI soldier stance on a field nearby, shortly after leaving for Dinard...

On the way to another highlight, another highlight: the forest in Huelgoat, alias the devil's bowling alley. We climbed down into the caves below, where light is thrown in thin beams into the musky darkness.

Then, finally, the cliffs of Crozon, our final destination... the view below...
Tamas testing his life insurance.
Who knew France had these treasures, other than the Guide Michelin?
On the way back, we stopped in several picturesque towns, above the Roman/early Gothic Pleyben, home of the Pleyben cookies.

Menez Hom, supposedly the best panorama in the Bretagne, overvalued in our opinion (see picture)

the obligatory beach picture, keeping in tradition. Above: Tamas running from seaweedman. (Seaweedman not pictured) A flower, courtesy of Katrin, which sprang about at an evening BBQ session at a backpacker's hostel somewhere in Bretagne.

And then: just us, and the sea.


The adventurous eight. From 1' o clock: Paul (CAN), Celia (CAN), Tamas (H), Euripides (BRA), Mika (SWE), Kathrin (SWE), Gustavo (BRA) & Yours Truly.

Decadence

Decadence is a word that slips out of my mouth quite easily, in fact, I am the first to admit that I have been mis- and over-using the term throughout my blogger career. Some deadflies historians might actually point out my own special hypocritical relationship to the word.

But here at HEC campus, one doesn't just take this word for a walk once in a while to chastise fellow students for lacking that socialist-compassionate glazing so appreciated in hardcore business universities... no, one can't just spit out the word; one has to really reflect about it, before settling on using it as a sort of "I told you so" excuse for then guiltily indulging oneself to the core.

It is hard to quantify the exact magnitude of crazyness that the elections of the local BDE (student government) draws with it here; 300,000 carefully raised Euros need to be spent in 3 days on completely furtuitious activities, ranging from completely pointless, gargantuan-sized advertisements of the various warring apolitical parties:
To the provision of random fun-tools around campus (Segway not pictured):
To the provision of only somewhat rickety amusement rides that, with only somewhat faulty security bracers and restraint mechanisms, are only somwehat dangerous to the soewhat jaded, indigenous student population:
let me not mention the free food service for one week, with room delivery, the poker tournament with the plasma screen as prize (grabbed, of course, from the French by our Xchange man Paul aka Pokerman aka Shinny), or the parties with just about free everything.
Those of you who think young students here might be getting the wrong impression about the meaning of life, go figure. Yeah, go figure, while I take my thirteenth intoxicated bumper car ride...

Some serious catching up.

Ok, I have to admit that I've been neglecting things. In fact, last time I logged into blogger, I could hardly even remember the password. I have been feeling guilty about not posting, tho, so guilty that I chose to drown the guilt in not posting even more. In fact, dead flies was not only dead in the last few months, but some of you might have gained the impression that it was actually even more than dead, perhaps undead, having reverted to some sort of electrodecaying afterlife as a zealously frozen-in-time mummy, or mummified zombie. Well, there is one thing that all mummies have in common, other than being wrapped-in-cloth carcasses, which is that they come back to life; this is also the reason why dead flies is back from the dead, albeit in a perhaps more deeply boring form.

Chartres

With Chartres checked off and another trip to the Bretagne already in the pipeline, who am I to complain? Well, I'm not sure, but I think Ill do it anyway...

first of all, I still haven't nailed the topic for my Master's thesis, tho I know it should be something on new economic geography and that I should choose at least two cities to analyse from an urban dynamic perspective. I was trying to surf the net for some good material, but the best thing I found was Rem Koolhaas' treatsy on Junkspace, an amusing yet unsettling piece from the Harvard Guide to Shopping. There are some great quotes, like: "Although its individual parts [i.e. parts of a shopping center] are the outcome of brilliant inventions, lucidly planned by human intelligence, boosted by infinite computation, their sum spells the end of Enlightenment, its resurrection as farce, a low-grade purgatory... [junkspace]" ; "junkspace is like being condemned to a perpetual Jacuzzi with millions of your best friends...". Anyway, read this rich form of scathing social critique if you have time; I certainly did, which wasted [at least relative to what I was supposed to be doing] even more of my time. I know I want to expand on the holistic approach I had in my last thesis, but Im not yet sure how I want to integrate such elements....

secondly, Ill have to spend this whole week on house-arrest studying for the theory of finance test I have next wednesday. This kinda snuck up on me... I was understanding every session until a few classes ago when I suddenly found myself copying endless processions of incomprehensible greek characters chained together with logical operators in what can only be described as a rococo math nightmare. Speaking of styles, check out this picture I shot of the stone work surrounding the altar at Chartres Cathedral.

thirdly, guess who I found hyping MEcon on the HSG website?

Our Campus

l'ouest side part deux

Ah yes. What bogus road trip would be complete without the obligatory escape-from the world, final destination, road-ends here beach picture? None of course; and so, neither was ours, until we went to the beach near Bordeaux.

And to prove to you that Im not lying about this being symptomatic, here a random picture of Sandfoort on our Amsterdam road trip 3 years ago;

followed by one from our time in Oostende early last year (notice the apocalyptic name for added effect on this last one). So obviously, I'm not just riding clichés here. Facts prove time and time again: final destination beaches are part of every well-staged decadent road trip these days.

Ok, anyway, back to the main plot. Unlike the Bordeaux wine from the vineyard, we didnt really let the city unfold its bouquet all too much, arriving deep in the evening and leaving early in the morning the next day; instead, we got to see Nantes in quite vivid detail, including this spooky night shot of the back gate of Nantes castle... now how useful was that while you were trying to free that imprisoned princess?
Actually, we ourselves chose all too often to leave the princes to the knights, preferring to leave our nights to the obligatory pizza-and-juice hostel sessions. Pictured: Richard, Luis, Mary-Louise, Juice, assorted bevarages, pizza. We then chose to move to more elegant surroundings, were dinner was served:
(no actually, this picture is from the Louvre I visited the week afterwards, but having accidentally made it into this post, it's such a beauty, I dont have the heart to take it out again...)