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Recently, I received an interesting email at work about the Siemens Arts Program that offers a cultural program for Siemens employees. Today they organized a visit to Shanghai’s latest cultural highlight, the 6th Shanghai Biennale "Hyper Design". Well, normally I am not the biggest fan of modern art, but I thought a look cannot hurt and I was really surprised in a positive way. The exibition is really worth visiting. The Biennale has many interesting installations of artists from around the globe that sometimes use high tech like projectors and displays and sometimes really basic materials, such as wood or cloth. Some of the really interesting parts where an "IKEA coffin" called DIY or a replica of an appartment that was upside down and you could walk underneath it on mirrors that let you see everything with yourself inside. Really hard to describe but awesome if you stand there.

The Biennale is open till Nov. 5th 2006 in the Shanghai Art Museum.

I was really busy last week, so here comes my belated report about last weekend.

On Saturday we took a trip to Qufu (曲阜). It actually is a rather small town south of Jinan. The thing that makes it special is that it is the birthplace of Kong Zi (孔子) around the world also known as Confucius. Until today it is the residence of the Kong Family that also nowadays has great influence and power.

In Qufu you can visit three sights: The Confucius temple (孔庙), the Confucius Mansion (孔府) and the Confucius Forrest (孔林) where Confucius was burried. The price of all three sights is 105 Yuan. You can find a city map here.

On Sunday I was at the Shandong Education TV (山东教育电视台) to help with the selection process for applicants of the China Media University (中国传媒大学). So it was the final round and the students had to prove their knowledge of the English language. There were 60 high school students from all over Shandong Province. So each student would come up to the podium and introduce him- or herself and then my job was to ask some simple questions according to their self introduction.

After each student was done, the jury gave points reflecting the students performance. It was a really interesting and fun experience to be part of this. It was actually aired in the whole province but I didn’t catch it on TV. I try to get a disk with the show and mybe put some feeds on my blog but I can’t promise anything.

I just got a note from a fellow geocacher that the ZDF is airing an episode of SOKO Kitzbühel that deals with geocaching. The air time is the 17th Feb. 06 at 18:00h (cet). If you are interested, you can find a recap here.

A few years back, I bought one of these PC games compilations. Among the games, I found an adventure game called Broken Sword. I had never heard of it, but since I am a huge fan of old school adventure games like Indiana Jones III and IV, Monkey Island etc. I gave it a shot. I turned out to be one of the best adventure games I ever played. The same goes for part 2 which is also awesome. The third part however disappointed me a lot since it had not the nicely animated 2D sprites but an ugly 3D design. On top the game control was horrible.

In the mean time some fans started developing a fan game called Broken Sword 2.5 - The Return of the Templars, which takes on where Broken Sword 2 left off. The game looks really cool from the screenshots and the demo. It is obvious how much effort these guys put into this game. According to the project’s website, the dubbing has just been finished and the game will be released soon. I really can’t wait till it is finished.

In the mean time, if you like those kind of adventure games I can really recommend "The Moment of Silence", which is certainly one of the best adventure games ever.

The Chinese know how to celebrate newyears. Check out how they set the Taipei 101 on fire with a spectacular fireworks! Here is the complete video. More photos are here.

The Domino Day 2005 is just over. They broke the broke the record again! More then 4 million stones (precisely 4.155.476) fell. But that is about all good I can say about the 2005 edition of this event. I really liked last years Domino Day. It was fun, it was exciting and easy to follow. This year it more or less just sucked. The creator, Robin Weijers, just wanted to make it even more spectacular then last year, but it ended up being just too much to follow. So many different things went on that even the camera could not follow all the action. Neither did the two commentators. Well, I can only talk about the German ones, but they did a just awefull job. The where babeling nonsense the whole time, missing all important moments. Event when large portions of stones did not fall, they didn’t even realize it. It was just a huge mess with no clear line. Second of all the theme was horrible. God, how can one use Fairytales for that? The theme was pushed so much in the foreground that the actual effects and special tricks where just lost. Last year the cool effects and stunts where the focus of interest, this year they where just a byproduct, while the two commentators got carried away in telling stupid fairytales mixed with dumb jokes.
It is too bad, but as it always happens when you want too much, you just mess it all up. That is exactly what happened this year. Hopefully next year we will have a Domino Day that focuses on the real protagonists, the stones.

Wikipedia: Domino Day

Normally the German TV station RTL2 is known for serving the dim but tonight I discoverd a very fun show called Mythbusters. It is like the Knoff-Hoff-Show taken on a new level. Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman test urban legends with spleeny and funny experiments.
Tonight the tested the urban legend that if you throw a penny of the Empire State building it will blow someones head down in the street. They constructed penny gun out of a stapler and shot the penny on their own hands to test it. And they did some crazy stuff with microwaves.
If you like wacky experiments and tinker with stuff you will enjoy this show. The only downer is that RTL2 shows a dubbed version as always on German TV. In the US it runs on the Discovery Channel.

Today a courageous campaign was launched by the largest German media companies. "Du bist Deutschland" (in English that means "You are Germany") is the message to make the Germans realize that only if everyone makes some effort and is willing to get himself up, Germany can get back up on its feet. I think a very good campaign with great TV spots. Now its up to the people to take some action. First step is to think positive and not to resign.
Click here for the campaign’s website.