In October 2008 I saw Miriam on the Oktoberfest in Munich, waiting for her brother. I asked her if I could take a couple of pictures, and whether she would like to have a photo session with me.

For some reason she said yes, and we met up a couple of weeks later for a 4 hours session (together with a friend of mine who helped me with the lighting, and her father).

It was her first photo shooting, she took a liking to modelling, and today, one and a half years later she told me that she was in last month’s issue of FHM!

Congratulations, pure awesomeness :)

Come to the dark side, we have cookies.
In the mailbox :) …

Thank you so much.

Bike-activists repainted a previously removed bike lane in Brooklyn. The anonymous civilians also made a video in which they document and explain their actions.

Treehugger.com states:

A few sources are reporting that men were arrested yesterday for trying to re-paint a bike lane on a 14-block stretch on Bedford avenue in Brooklyn. The bike lane was recently removed by the city because of complaints by some local groups (the usual stuff about having fewer parkings and “hurting local businesses”).

Unfortunately, the men were arrested. And since the whole thing took place in the US, let’s hope they are not going to get their hands hacked off (or something similar).

I like weird data and facts.

The magazine brand eins just released a book full of numbers – “Die Welt in Zahlen – 2010” – which is highly recommendable. I hope they don’t mind if I translate a couple of items into English to make a bit of advertising.

• Pirate assaults on ships in 2003: 445
• Pirate assults on ships in 2008: 293
• Increase in piracy-insurance in the last 12 months: 900%

• Turnover made by Real Madrid in season 07/08 (in million Euro): 366
• Turnover by all German football, handball, icehockey and basketball clubs together in the same time: 500

• Worldwide turnover with digital music in 2004 (in billion dollars): 0.4
• Worldwide turnover with digital music in 2007: 3.7
• Number of illegal downloads per legal download: 8

• The intense smell of fog on a cold winter night in the city.
• The young man standing inside one of the doors of a crowded train, bidding people to enter into the warm and cosy metro, encouraging them friendly to stand closer to each other so that more people can fit.
• The young woman in the same train offering her seat to a Japanese woman – and her husband offering the young woman the seat becoming free a couple of minutes later next to where he is standing.
• The movie “The Fountain” by Darren Aronofsky – clearly one of the best movies ever made.

Worth living: eating a hot chocolate crepes on the way home from work, in the dark, on my first day of snow in Berlin.

Life is great.

(Also worth living: the word mêlée)

chatting with 2 close friends from midnight to 5.30am and having a great time and being told very nice things and fallig asleep within 10 seconds of going to bed in the morning; meeting an actress who wants me to take pictures of her while i was freezing a bit in a nice café and then she was so nice to put half a litre of really cosy warm coffee over my trousers and everything felt better instantly and the breakfast was really good also; being very tired on a saturday afternoon and drinking tea wrapped in blankets on a very sunny day on an awesome roof-deck with a great view of berlin; sleeping on a warm couch on a sunny afternoon in a very warm living room with lots of people around close to a good friend i have not seen for ages; eating pizza in a really great italian restaurant with rocket and ham and parmesan cheese and drinking the best apple juice in my whole life although i’ve been drinking apple juice a lot for over 15 years you just have to try stralsunder mineralwasser bio apfelschorle; eating the best brunch ever with newly wed friends i did not have a couple of months ago with lots of cheese and great swedish dishes and many nice people and also with eating dark chocolate spread for the first time in my life and enjoy myself a lot and also reaching 1650 rated arena ranking

• Alles wird besser, aber nichts wird gut.
• Berlin, dein Gesicht hat Sommersprossen.