One certainly come across some gems from time to time, and this was one of them. I was walking down 1st Avenue and was literally opposite the United Nations building and saw this laundy / cleaners shop.

You know the saying “When in Rome, do what the Romans do“, well the office guys and gals are all talking / thinking / breathing College Basketball as there is some big tournament starting today. There are 64 teams and they all play each other over the course of 3 weeks. It’s a knockout championship and there can only be one winner. Typically there is some form of a rivalry going on in the office in the form of a fantasy basketball competition via the CBS Sports Website. $20 to enter, 26 players in the office and $400 prize money.

When there is money to be won, those who know me, know I will enter regardless of actually knowing the sport in question. Basketball is one such sport. I have never followed it, but a chance to win $400 is worth following it for the time that I am here.

So they got this thing called a bracket on the CBS Sports website, which is a grid of all the teams, who they are playing, and it shows the winners and losers, and ultimately who will play each other in the final and it all works on points I think.

I had the computer pick my fantasy winners and losers and I changed a few of the winners to make it more personal. I looked at the names of the teams and decided who would win or lose by their names. Very scientific as you can see.

They started playing at 12pm today and after the first round of games, guess who is tied in 1st place (out of 26 fantasy basketball fanatics – ha ha ha)?

My first night in New York and I visited the Top of the Rock Observatory. It’s based at the top of the GE building, part of the Rockefeller Center.  The evening sky was clear and the view was amazing. 360 degree views of New York City by night. I got some stunning photos but sadly I have nothing to show show at present, as my 16GB Panasonic Class 10 memory card decided to corrupt itself a day later. Grrrrrr!!!!

Highly annoying. It just means I will have to revisit the Top of the Rock some other time.

The centerpiece of Rockefeller Center is the 70-floor, 872-foot (266 m) GE Building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza (“30 Rock”)—formerly known as the RCA Building—centered behind the sunken plaza. The building is the setting for the famous Lunchtime atop a Skyscraper photograph, taken by Charles C. Ebbets in 1932 of workers having lunch, sitting on a steel beam, without safety harnesses. The 840-foot (260 m) drop lies below. (Source: Wikipedia)

After a canceled flight on Sunday and a missed flight yesterday, I have finally made it to New York early this morning. The plane in the photo was not my booked American Airlines flight. I thought it was until I reached the desk and they told me my flight had already left 2 hours earlier. Have you ever experienced that feeling?  (Not recommended).  It’s sickening, especially when I had gotten to the airport about 5 hours earlier and had been sitting in the lounge waiting for my flight unbeknown that it had already left. I didn’t even hear them calling me over and over and over again. (oops).

Anyway, American Airlines were jolly good and accommodating, and even got my suitcase hand packed on the plane. When I got on the plane, there was hardly a sole on board, so I got to sit in an area with loads of legroom and no one on either side of me or behind me (and no screaming babies).  The service on AA was outstanding and I was very impressed with them. The flight in was a bit bumpy, but all good. Getting through customs and immigration was a breeze, it must have been the friendly South African accent that they warmed too. I didn’t really see JFK airport.

I am staying at the DoubleTree Metropolitan hotel in Manhattan. It pretty good, I got a nice big room, with a wonderful view of another hotel room’s shower room (hehehe)!

Here is one awesome song I’ve been listening to recently. It’s a song called “Vacuum Bag” by Stroke 9. I discovered this band on Last.FM. The song comes from the album called “Rip it off”.

Last.FM is a great site that has introduced me to many new bands I wouldn’t have found otherwise.

Here are the lyrics to the song Vacuum Bag:

You’ll never know what happened to me
It’s just one of those things
I was sitting by myself
And my thoughts started pouring out
Remember that time on our trip
You asked me where we were going
I said Barcelona
You said that’s not what I meant
Maybe I’ll never get it
I just don’t think I’m like that
Don’t like planning stuff out
It never happens that way
I’m like a vacuum bag
That holds all that old dirt
Remember that time
we found your mom’s valium
and took it

Don’t hate me
Don’t regret me
Don’t ever forget me
Wherever you go
Whatever you do
Don’t say I never loved you

That summer when we wore no shoes
And we danced on the fourth of July
and we listened to your sister’s records
And Frampton came alive
Even then you knew what you wanted
Even then I had no clue
I was just living in the moment
And the moment was all about you
Remember that time in LA
You asked me what we were doing
I said we’re doing fine
You said here we go again
I’m like a vacuum bag
That holds all that old dirt
Remember that time we said
We’d be together
Forever

Don’t hate me
Don’t regret me
Don’t ever forget me
Wherever you go
Whatever you do
Don’t say I never loved you

Cause it matters to me
Can you hear me
Everyday I ask the same thing

Will you ever know what happened to me
It happens everyday
And you wonder what went on
It’s there and than it’s gone
Maybe I’m sentimental
And I start to reminisce
And every time I do
I still want to tell you this

Don’t hate me
Don’t regret me
Don’t ever forget me
Wherever you go
Whatever you do
Don’t say I never loved you

BIO: Stroke 9 formed in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1989. The band has since recorded five albums and toured extensively in the United States, Canada and Europe. Fueled by the commercial success of the hit song “Little Black Backpack,” their third album, “Nasty Little Thoughts,” went gold in 2000. The single “Kick Some Ass” from their fourth album “Rip It Off” was featured in the movie “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.” The band has also had songs in other movies and TV shows including “Ed TV,” “Scrubs,” “Malcolm in the Middle,” and “West Wing.” They released the album “All In” in 2004 and “Cafe Cuts”, an all acoustic album of 11 of their past songs and 1 new song in February of 2006. Their sound is similar to that Third-Eye Blind, Lit, Greenwheel, and many of the other late 90’s alternative bands. For more details please check out Stroke9.com or www.myspace.com/stroke9

Woweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! June 2010 is going to be one awesome month for music! Not only are we seeing Green Day live at Wembley Stadium, but they are releasing their very own Rockband XBOX 360 game on the 8th of June… Clive, are you reading this? Imagine playing your favorite Green Day songs on your big 42″ Toshiba LCD.

Schumacher ‘out of his mind’ and ‘no hope’ of F1 title

Those words coming from Eddie Jordan on a recent interview when asked what he thought about Michael Schumacher return to F1?

Let’s leave it at that and comment again when Schumacher wins a race or beats the 100 race win mark or god forbid, wins another world championship.

I bet you Eddie “idiot” Jordan will backtrack soon or later.

I found the most amazing wallpaper manager for the Nokia N900. It’s called PRISMIC and it hooks directly into N900Wallpapers.com, so you can stay up to date with the newest and hottest backgrounds for your N900. The application cost me $3.75 and I tell you it is well worth it for the sheer choice in wallpapers.

Here are some awesome features:

You can browse all the available categories direct from the N900wallpaper.com website and it shows you exactly how many wallpapers exist in each category.

When you select a category it shows a scrollable grid of thumbnails. Notice some of the thumbnails have four squares in the bottom left hand corner. This shows you that the wallpaper can be spread over the four desktops that the N900 has.  The thumbnails without these squares are single images. You still have the choice as explained below to push the wallpaper to individual desktops or all four.

Lets say I select one of those multiple screen wallpapers. The 4 images appear and there are a couple of options at the bottom. The first icon allows you to save the wallpapers to your device without saving it as a wallpaper (for later use).

The second icon asks you to choose the wallpaper to apply to a desktop, meaning you don’t necessarily have to have all four wallpapers on your four desktops. (clever because you might like only one of the four wallpapers, or two of the four wallpapers).

The third icon allows you to apply all the wallpapers to all your desktops. It puts them in the right order as well. (very clever).

The fourth icon tells you who created the wallpaper. (nice, give credit where due).

Finally the fifth icon allows you to rate the wallpaper and this is extremely useful especially if one is looking for the Top 100 highest rated wallpapers.

Only once you select the image and how you want it displayed on your device, does it downloads.

There are so many awesome wallpapers to use that one is extremely spoilt for choice.

Highly recommended –

It is strange how music comes into your life. We were sitting on a bus driving down a steep mountain pass somewhere between Courchevel 1850 and Courchevel 1650 when we heard this song called “Ugly Brothers” by DJ Format.

I won’t lie when I say I don’t like hip hop or rap music. I could probably count the number of songs on my one hand that I like. But this particular song one is really catchy and funny and the lyrics are quite clever.(I couldn’t find the lyrics anywhere on the web).

UK Hip Hop give it a good review.

Here is a clever music video for the song by Barmie over at MySpace.

What a day, what a week! Our Courchevel ski holiday came to an end with a lot of laughing. I will explain shortly…

We woke to another cold and cloudly morning, well that’s what it looked like from our balcony. It had snowed overnight and everything had a thick layer of snow on it. It must have snowed quite a lot as our balcony was piled up with snow.

We planned a couple of blue runs that would take us down to Courchevel 1550, ones we had not done yet and decided to get to the slopes an hour earlier than we had been, to get as much skiing in as possible.

It was as if the weather wanted to give us one last day of perfect clear blue skies, because as we were walking up to the starting area, the clouds lifted and we saw the awesome mountain slopes in all their splendid glory. The slopes glistened in the sun like sparkling diamonds. I will insert a few photos when we get back home.

The weather was deceiving though! The second we started to ski down the mountain, it soon became apparent that the air temperature / wind chill factor was not ideal. We later heard it was a chilly -10C at 1850 and above 2000m around -15C. It was miserable on the open chair lifts. The cold bit into any visible skin, which was the face. In hind sight a balaclava would have been the perfect solution.

We did some super fast blue runs and used our Panasonic FT1 all weather camera to take some stunning HD video and photos. It even managed to capture one of us wiping out (no names mentioned…too much pride at stake). Talking cameras, one cannot fault this camera. It worked brilliantly in the snow, and was in a couple of big crashes and its durable body survived all the knocks we have thrown it. Not to mention it was fully submerged in the Orange river in South Africa less than three months ago and survived the desert heat in Namibia. I also carried our gorilla-pod camera stand and we able to attach it to a few chosen locations allowing us some ‘together’ photos.

I mentioned in an earlier post that Courchevel 1850 has an airport. Well just above the landing strip is a gorgeous restaurant / meeting area with tables and chairs, and even deck chairs. So it was here we stopped for a mid morning hot cup of chocolate and customary beer. If it wasn’t for the ice cold wind and snow everywhere, you could almost believe you were sitting on a beach somewhere. Fantastic scenery.

This particular restaurant / meeting point must have been special because they had their very own DJ (not in da house, but ON da house).

He had his decks and everything set up on the roof and he was belting out tracks. I was thinking he could have caused a mini avalanche just above his head, but he didn’t seem too bothered.

At around 2pm we had enough. Our feet and legs were tired and we had done most, if not all of the green and blue runs through the course of the week. Quite an achievement we thought, considering this was our first week of skiing. We handed in our rented skis and went to have lunch at one of the many brilliant restaurants. Courchevel 1850 is not cheap, but we managed to find affordable places to eat.

Our final bit of fun was hiring a helmet and ’snow bob’ or plastic sledge for €5. Courchevel has its very own luge course running from 1850 down to 1550. It winds down a 2km mountain pass with loads of hairpin bends and sheer cliff drops and ice barriers. The entire course has huge fir trees lining the road. The sledge is plastic, has a seat, a foot holder, two pull brakes on either side of the chair, which are used for breaking and steering. The course is steep and icy in parts with bumps that cause one to fly through the air. The second you start its impossible not to laugh. If you are following close behind someone the ice sprays up from their sledge, so its imperrative that one wears snow goggles. There appears to be no limit on how many people can be on the course at any one time and this adds to the fun and laughter as people are passing you or sliding into the hairpin bends at breakneck speeds or crashing in front of you and it is just the funniest thing ever. Everyone becomes everyones friend for that moment regardless of nationality or language. We did five or six runs. After a while it became quite painful on the coxis and knees, arms, hands, head, back etc if one is accident prone…(ha ha ha). The helmet is a must have item. I came off on a straight after going airborne and crashed and rolled a few times, hitting my head in the process into the ground. Having a helmet definitely saved a severe bruising or concussion.

So it is all over until next year. We will definitely be going back to Courchevel 1850. It has so much character and choice, and it is hard to fault. Perhaps if we win the lottery between now and next year, we can afford to stay at the €35000 per week Chevel Blanc hotel.

The above photos were taken on my Nokia N900, resized and cropped on the N900.