Viva Las Vegas!

People say “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”. Accordingly to this motto I will try to describe what actually happened in a hidden language and it is up to you if you want to read between the lines.

The fun started with a 6 hour drive on Friday afternoon. When we reached our hotel, the Trump Tower in Las Vegas, a friend told me that they have booked an upgrade for as cheap as 100 $. First I thought what a waste of money but second and especially after the second night I was sure that this extra money was invested for a good reason. Once you see the pictures and have finished reading this entry you might understand.
However, after moving in our home for the weekend the party started. Our home consistet of two independend appartments both equipped with a pantry. The larger appartement had not only the bigger pantry inclusive bar but also a second bathroom. The larger bathroom of both had a bathtube in front of a huge window, with stunning views especially at night.
The party on Friday night was pretty much fun. I had a fun foam bath in the smaller appartements bathtube, was wittnessing the use of the blender in a funny way (no human was hurt) and enjoyed conversations with friends.
At or short before midnight the party was shifted to the XS Club in the Encore Hotel. Entrance fee was as cheap as 50 $. This amount made it easy for me to decide what drinks I will have during my stay at the club. I was already hungry when I entered the club but waited with late dinner until 2:30 AM. A friend accompanied me and until we found an  italian restaurant my friend earned already 5 $ for taking photographs of a random couple. I I thought: Lucky him, he got some of his entrance fee back. But I myself was lucky as well. Back in the club some asian snobs were throwing bunches of 1 dollar into the crowd every now and then throughout the night – I collected some of the dollars and had somewhat 40 dollars extra in the end. Thank you guys, this made my night in the 50 $ club quite reasonable!
The party lights were replaced by bright cleaning lights at 4 AM in the morning. This is when I went back to the Trump Tower for sleep.
Saturday night started with a Burger at the Outback Restaurant for breakfast at lunch time. We went down the strip, had a look into the Encore Hotel, the Caesars Palace, the Cosmopolitan and finally the New York New York. In between we have been visiting the M&M Store as well as the Coca Cola and Hard Rock Cafe store. The M&M dispenser, where you can pour M&Ms in dozens of different colors, was quite impressive. The Coca Cola ice bear was the funniest of all employees in the Coca Cola store. I skipped the roller coaster ride in the New York New York Hotel and headed back to the Trump Tower to pick up the car for a ride to the Stratosphere Observation Tower to observe Las Vegas by night. Just after, back to the Trump Tower to prepare for the night. This included another fun foam bath this time in the huge bathroom of the larger appartment. The view from the bathtube outside the window were quite breathtaking. Next time I’d prefer female company, candles and rose pebbles instead of …!
Later I went to the show “Cirque del Soleil – Mystere”. The artists were very impressive and did things with their bodys I thought were never possible. The show was accompanied with nice music. The show was definitely worth a visit!
Instead of partying I went gambling this time and lost 9 dollars at one armed bandits and video roulette machines. I must have left my luck in India :/ At least the loss is bearable.
To breathe some fresh air I strolled down the strip with a friend and had another night snack at Denny’s restaurant after midnight.
On sunday we had to leave our luxury home in the trump tower. After packing the whole group went to the Hofbräuhaus replica for lunch. Lunch was nice but the entertainment could have been better, not to say more bavarian. The erotic heritage museum was a nice conclusion to my time in Las Vegas.
We had a stop in Hollywood on the way back to Camarillo to see some of the stars leaving the Oscar gala walking over the red carpet.

Enjoy the pictures of the weekend!

Home » Viva Las Vegas! » Viva Las Vegas!
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XS Club
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View from bathroom
TV in mirror
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Party setup
Trump Tower
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Chocolate fountain
Paris Paris
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Hard Rock Guitar
M&Ms
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Coca Cola ice bear
New York New York
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The strip
Hofbräuhaus
Hofbräuhaus 2
Hofbräuhaus 3
Hofbräuhaus 4
Hofbräuhaus 5
Hofbräuhaus 6
Oscar night
Oscar night
Oscar night
Oscar night
Oscar night
Oscar night
Oscar night
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One star reserved for me
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Erotic Heritage Museum
Erotic Heritage Museum
Erotic Heritage Museum - condom skirt
Erotic Heritage Museum - toilet
Erotic Heritage Museum - toilet
Erotic Heritage Museum - room

Preparation for Las Vegas

This work week started on Tuesday and is ending tomorrow just before the ride to Las Vegas!

Again I was gathering more knowledge. This time I calculated values to rate the drive quality of a drive on a dynamometer.
We discussed at work how to improve the usability of the Test Order Manager without too many changes in the data model. I will have to ask the users of the program what kind of view they would like to have on the data to cover the different use cases as best as possible.

Anyways this blog is not to bore you with my exciting things at work. And actually I shouldn’t give too many information on this page.
This entry is fully meant to inform you that I am packing for my weekend trip to Vegas right now.
Stay tuned for the next entry, it will cover the party stories and pictures of the fabulous city of Las Vegas!

The Awesome San Francisco Weekend!

The extended weekend was over before someone could finish the word combination “San Francisco” – obviously it wasn’t like that but I felt like that.

I grabbed some coffee for my friends at McDonald and waited for their arrival at my home in Camarillo. They have been dropping some one at the airport.
The drive up the 101 started just after 10 PM and ended at about 4:30 AM. We had less breaks on the way and the traffic was easy going.

We moved in our pretty cheap deal hotel which we booked on hotwire for a pretty awesome price and slept until 11 AM, had breakfast at Starbucks and started the sightseeing in San Francisco. The Palace of Fine Arts was a very good place to walk around and to enjoy nice architecture.
Next huge sight was the Stanford University in Palo Alto. This amazing campus had just everything and was obviously technically up-to-date. There was the Hoover Tower with good views across the whole campus, a huge library and massive buildings for each faculty. If someone can gift me some money so that I can study there, just call me.
After some In-N-Out burger we headed to the google headquarters. I heard already good things about it before I went there but I was completely impressed actually standing on google property. The first things to see were the bikes in google colors. As they have not been locked we had fun using them to explore google grounds. We found a huge park area kind of thing with a volleyball ground, seating arrangement, art place and an outside whirlpool/pool attached. Last one was locked behind bars otherwise we would have taken the chance for a swim. Lets apply at google in the future!
Second headquarters for me in the area have been Apples. I was kind of disappointed because the huge silver shining apple was missing at the front entrance of the building. Anyways we took some nice pictures there and headed towards facebook headquarters. But there we were even more disappointed: only a small lettering says that this is THE facebook building, not a huge thumbs up or facebook sign on top of the building. This gets a massive dislike in form of not even taking a single picture.
It was already kinda late when we reached the hotel to prepare for the big night out. However we didn’t manage more than one drink in a bar east to the hotel – everyone was tired from the night before.
We got up early enough to enjoy the included breakfast: waffles and cereals. A stroll along Pier 39 in perfect sunshine made a perfect start to the day. My friends boarded the boat to Alcatraz when I decided to climb the Coit Tower for a good view of the city of San Francisco. I managed to see the narrow winding Lombard street and to ride the old cable car before my fellowers came back from Alcatraz. Reunioned we drove across the Golden Gate Bridge to the Sausalitos district for late lunch. As that place is famous for its clam chowder, I couldn’t resist to have one after a greek pizza. The district and coastal line in this district was inviting for a walk.
Back to down town north ways as we planned to avoid traffic jams south ways across the Golden Gate bridge. However the views along the huge red bridge from below are pretty awesome. The Oakland Bridge on the way back was built using similiar techniques.
Later we headed out again to find a nice club to stay. The Parlour was nice and offered some good music but the crowd has not been there. Another Club in Down Town looked also pretty empty which is why we enjoyed driving up and down in Downtown with the car before heading back to our hotel. A hundred feet westwards of the hotel we finally found a nice bar with Karaoke feature and enjoyed another hour there before finally going to bed.
The whole Monday was meant for the road trip back to Los Angeles. Apart from beautiful landscape we have been visiting a lot of nice places: Pigeon Point Lighthouse, Santa Cruz Boardwalk, 17-Mile-Drive and Big Sur.
In Santa Cruz we have been riding the wooden roller coaster and enjoyed the fun atmosphere in the theme park at the board walk. On the 17-Mile-Drive we had a salad picknick with some handicap: it was windy and cold at the picnic table and one could not miss the smell of the seals living not far away on a rocky island. We didn’t win the fight against the sunset on the Big Sur. It was nice to see the landscape at the 90 mile long stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway in half shadow and half lit but I would have prefered to have one more day at this road with the stunning views  to not have to rush from one vista point to the next.
I fell into bed right after reaching home at quarter to 11 PM.
It was definitely a very nice weekend and is definitely not to miss for anyone who is coming to California!

Following, all pictures i have taken on this beautiful weekend:

Home » The Awesome San Francisco Weekend! » The Awesome San Francisco Weekend!
Pancakes - American Style
Palace of Fine Arts
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At Stanford University!
At Stanford University!
At Stanford University!
At Stanford University - View from Hoover Tower
At Stanford University - View from Hoover Tower 2
At Stanford University - View from Hoover Tower 3
At Stanford University - View from Hoover Tower 4
At Stanford University - Hoover Tower
At Stanford University!
At Stanford University!
Google Headquarters
Google Headquarters Biking
Google Headquarters Art
Google Headquarters Volleyball ground
Apple Headquarters - missing silver apple
Apple Headquarters
On the way to the Coit Tower
View from the Coit Tower
View from the Coit Tower - Alcatraz
View from the Coit Tower 2
View from the Coit Tower 3
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Lombard Street
Lombard Street 2
Demonstration
Golden Gate Bridge
Skyline San Francisco
Golden Gate Bridge
View from the Twin Towers
Pigeon Point Lighthouse
Rollercoaster at Santa Cruz Boardwalk
Santa Cruz Boardwalk
Picnic at 17-Mile-Drive
Seals at 17-Mile-Drive
Views at the 17-Mile-Drive
Lonely cypress at 17-Mile-Drive
Ghost Tree at 17-Mile-Drive
Golden Gate Bridge
Karaoke Party
Giant Dipper at Santa Cruz Boardwalk
I am in Giant Dipper at Santa Cruz Boardwalk
Santa Cruz Boardwalk
Santa Cruz Boardwalk 2

Off to San Francisco!

Another week at BMW has passed. It was fun and exciting and I learned a lot more about dynamometers, car exhaust and the company itself. My boss gave me also a full briefing how the Test Order Manager Software evolved. I learned how to calculate the fuel burned during a test on the dynamometer just after analyzing the exhaust and knowing the consistence of the fuel being used.

However leisure time just after knocking-off time has also not been boring. I have been again to the cinema, watching “Identity Thief” comedy a kind of a funny road movie. Another night I have been to a pub chatting with colleagues and just yesterday we made a farewell BBQ for Bianca who is leaving back to Germany after a short holiday in the States. The BBQ was very nice but the discussion about “What is love and how long will it last in a relationship” could have been shorter as there will be no general consent.

Tonight I am off to San Francisco. I was baking pan cakes to get some power for the long drive up the 101. Saturday and Sunday we will do some sightseeing in San Francisco area and on Monday we will have a road trip back to Los Angeles which is including some sights on the way. This is just possible because on Monday is Presidents day!

As this entry is very short you do not deserve any pictures but stay tuned for the San Francisco report on Tuesday!

First Week @ BMW

After a warm welcome in California (see previous posts) the weather was cooling down. It was still sunny but it needed more than a shirt to keep me warm in the lunch break and evenings.

Monday morning work at BMW started. The first day didn’t cover much more than paper work and a short introduction of the office building and the lab. After the first two days I was completely set with a mobile number, a bank account and a car. I analyzed some historic data on the last 3 days of the week. The data was recorded whilst I was driving on a dynamometer in the lab. Anyway you would think the driving was more exciting than the analyzing part but it was not. The driving is very straight forward, following a line on a screen whilst the analyzing part contained a lot of trying until I got the wanted result on the screen. Man I was excited when the result was what it has been expected.

I have been to the cinema on Tuesday to watch “Parker”. A really nice Action Movie with Jason Statham.
On Thursday I went to Santa Barbara on a night out with 3 other interns. I probably have still been affected by the jet lag as I have been very tired in the Sandbar. After a few minutes power nap I was able to rock the dance floor again.
Yesterday on Saturday I have been to Malibu to watch the sunset from a beach. Left hand was busy holding a chocolate chunk muffin whilst the right hand carried a hot chocolate to fight the cool breeze. Amazing sunset!

I took hardly any pictures last week but here is what I have:

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Lunch break

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Companion for 6 months

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Sunset in Malibu

Hello from the USA

Wow, the flight was easy. I forced myself to sleep for a while during the flight. However more than a half asleep, half awake was not possible as to Japan time it was still afternoon. I left Japan approximately at 3 PM in the afternoon on the 2nd of February and reached the states on the same date at 8 AM. Awesome crap. While time in Japan is close to Good Night, my day in USA was just about to start and I have hardly slept.

Christian, my predecessor who is working with me for the next 4 weeks, gave me a warm welcome at the airport and gave me a lift to my new home in Camarillo in his MINI. Linda welcomed me as well and after a shower we headed off for some sightseeing. Four other interns of BMW joined the group.

First we visited the Pepperdine University. It must be very expensive to study there. They have huge sporting facilities like tennis courts, swimming pool, a soccer court and many other. There is expensive looking student housing on campus, some theaters and art galleries. Wow but this university is just too expensive for me.

Next we headed towards Hollywood where we had some Berlin Currywurst on the way. A very nice meal! And the fries godlike!

The griffith oberservation platfrom right above Hollywood was the next destination. From that point we had a beautiful view across the city of Los Angeles and were able to see the Hollywood sign. To pass the time until after sunset we watched the exhibition inside of the observation building and watche a movie about the history of the griffith park. I didn’t quite get the contents of that movie as I have been half asleep half awake.
Los Angeles looks very nice even after sunset but why is the Hoolywood sign on the hill not illuminated?

For the end of the day we went for dinner in the Lazy Dogs Cafe @ Thousand Oaks.

Unfortunately I do not have much pictures on my phone:

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01 Home Front

04 Home Living room

12 Bedroom 1

13 Bedroom 1

21 Home Garage 1

23 Home Backyard

So fast

I didn’t want 1.5 days pass so fast neither did I want 8 Weeks holiday passing so fast neither did I want to pass the 4.5 months in India so quickly. Tomorrow, when I wake up, everything will be new and exciting, everything will be so American! I will start earning some money, I will face a new challenge, I will again have a place to stay for more than a couple of nights, I will drive a cool car from Monday on and hopefully make some more cool friends to discover the United States of America!

However here comes the story of the 1.5 days which passed so quickly. I headed towards the Ginza district for the second time to see how it is by day. Obviously, same brands but way more people. As I am not much interested in brand shopping I left the area without bothering my wallet and headed north to the kite museum in the nihombashi district. First of all the museum is hard to find, second it is pretty small. Nevertheless, no corner of the museum was left unused. Small and large kites from different eras were hanging from the ceiling, hanging at the walls and at boards. Again heading north, in the akihabara district,I found an electronic store with focus on robotics. My eyes were glowing seeing all the different kinds of roboter sets and parts in the shelve. In the TV in the shop they were showing a robot contest, where robots had to throw balls in a certain order in a goal wall with 9 holes. Further north I bought a ticket for the hotaluna lounge boat but I still had 1 hour until departure. I decided to have some tea and cake in the asakusa district to shorten the waiting period – this is how time passes fast, I am the problem…
The hotaluna water bus is quite an impressive water boat! Its very flat and the interior is more similar to a lounge than to a boat which Carries people. Appart from that everything from just above the water line was glass with only a few thin metal bars. When shipping along the river I were seeing some nice illuminated bridges and sky scrapers. The boat was heading south to the hinode pier where I disembarked. I visited the Tokyo Tower but did just go to the observation platform at 150 meters because the one at 250 m would have almost doubled the price. I also have been to many observation platforms which is why I didn’t see any sense in going to the higher platform.
Just after I steered to the restaurant tentake to try the famous fungu fish (aka blow fish) in form of sushi. As there were only three pieces I ordered some fungu mix tempura. Almost full I decided to go to another restaurant (ichioku) to indulge a tofu steak. During the second dinner in the roppongi area,I met three Japanese guys all are working for a shipping company and one is the president. The president of the company invited me for dinner and leaded me to a bar where a world famous beatle cover band is playing music almost every night. Men this was the night, lovely life music originally written by the Beatles. I first hesitated to listen to the last show on the stage at 23.30 because I was not sure when the last subway was going back to shinjuku. I decided to stay and enjoy the good music.
There were two more trains going to shinjuku after the one I took – well done!

I planned 3 sights on the last morning in Tokyo. But managed to visit only the prada building close to the omotesando station. The building looked a bit like a huge diamond. I picked up the luggage which was stored at the hotel, returned my metro card and headed for the airport. Everything went smoothly, if not mentioning the long queue and the hardly working free airport wifi . Probably those two problems are connected to each other.

Now,I am off to lax airport!
You will be hearing from me, once I have settled down!

Enjoy the pictures:

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Last minute sightseeing

Only 1.5 days left in Japan. I will try to cover the 8 sights on my “want to visit” – sight seeing list of Tokyo. The only problem is that the sights are scattered across the city – hence tomorrow will be quite expensive transport wise.

Lets start with yesterday. First of all I have been in the Ueno zoo where 2 large pandas suffer heavily bored in their cages. With paying entry I support this idea but I still feel sad for all creatures in a zoo. Finally I also spotted elephants but they were also caged – quite easy but not how I would prefer to see them. The lion was walking up and down in his cage and the tall brown bear rubbed his back at the stones in his enclosure. Not to mention the ice bear, the monkeys, the kangaroos, the bison, the crocodile, the snakes, the giraffes, the zebras -all bored. The sea lions were the only one who looked a bit amused, lying on a rocky island in their aquarium and getting tanned like Europeans who want to win a beauty contest.
Just beside the zoo is the nature and science museum. One could easily spend a whole day in the museum but I focused on two areas: Japanese techniques in observing nature and progress in science and technology. This time I have been kind of bored until I reached the exploration space with the hands on experiments. Awesome,I felt like a child doing all the experiments with electricity, action reaction, mirrors, gravity etc. – I could have spent hours. In the same museum was also a cinema called “theater 360″. I was totally impressed. The room had the shape of a huge ball. The inner surface of it has been all projection wall apart from the area of the entrance and exit doors. The reeling of the bridge between the two doors was mainly glass and the floor of the bridge at its sides also glass. Once the movie started it was everywhere: above, below, left, right, front, back – stunning. I felt like sitting in an airplane! Very impressive. The movies were about a deep quest inside the earth and a journey of 13.7 years compiled to 15 minutes In total.
Just after I headed North across the yanaka cemetery. There are beautiful cherry trees but not at this time of the year.
I steered one more time towards  asakusa by metro and reached this time in time to see the shops open. The feeling was kind of German Christmas market: cold outside, warm yellow glowing bulbs and the smell of sweets in the air. I managed to buy some new shoes for the up coming challenge in California next week. Some caramel chocolate shake at “enjoy!time” and a pizza on the way back to the hotel and a nice short rest to start the next day.

I have been up early today with the aim to see kamakura and having a visit to the hard rock café in Yokohama.
Kamakura basically consists of temples and shrines. But On my way to the “tsurugaoka hachimangu shrine” I strolled along a lovely shopping street.just before I had super nice tempura in a restaurant by the train station.
The shrine was free and open to the public but apart from architecture I was bored. I think one must be involved to find excitement for this. I followed the path and found 5 more temples for which they charge entrance fee. As I am not involved and rather bored of temples I didn’t enter and so I saved the entrance fee and had  besides a nice walk from one to the other. Back south but this time through the forest I came across the “zeniarai benzeiten shrine”, open and free for the public. Last one on the list was “kotokuin temple” and here I paid the entrance fee because It has a huge sitting Buddha in its garden, just like the one I met in hongkong. I used the legendary “enoden line”to go back to Kamakura station. Legendary because it looks like from an ancient time. luckily Yokohama is on the way back to Tokyo. Unluckily I entered the hard rock café in Yokohama hungry before I took the train back to shinjuku. 3000 yen on one “red, white, blue burger” and a chocolate thick shake.

This is it you are released from the text and rewarded with some pictures:

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2nd hrc in Tokyo

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Panda behind bush

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Gorilla

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Bored;-)

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Tanning:-)

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Bored Turtle

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Huge Bored turtle

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Bored froggy

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Don't they feel cold?

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This is a quiz

The first one giving me an acceptable answer to the question for the picture above is getting a souvenir sent home, to collect at my mums place;-)
What is this?

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U like jigsaws? Take that!

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Yanaka cemetery

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Temple/shrine whatever

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Temple/shrine whatever

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Temple/shrine whatever, Buddha in the garden

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Yokohama hard rock cafe

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Red, white and blue burger at hard rock cafe

You will here from me with the storey of my last 1.5 days in Tokyo. What else to say than stay tuned?