I don´t have anything to add...except that the weekend nights were fun as well. I met people from Tasmania, England, Germany, Holland, China, Denmark and Russia - Wow. Nice. And with everyone you have to "gan bei" (skoal), so I decimated my braincells to a minimum...At least I still know how breathing works but I have to hold my breath while writing. Well, I post some pics instead.

Good Morning BEIJIIIIIIING

actually i was gonna post some pics today, but i forgot to bring them to the 'place of the holy internet'---the office. mmmhh, damn. anyway, i ll try to get them online tomorrow. yesterday was a great day, alex and i didnt wake up at 5, but at 3 instead, so basically the day was still to come and ours. we took the cab to the Bahai Park and as we were driving through Gongnentijungchan Beilu i was already discovering the Beijing i had been looking for. it was still very commercial but the whole feel of the streets and places was more hutong than business.
i think the city is gearing up for chinese new year, there are red lampions everywhere. at night the red shinny dots look amazing and even though they are hanging next to neon-lights, advertising thai foot massages, it looks somewhat ancient.
anyway, the Bahai Park is wonderful. its located north-west of the vorbidden palace and in its middle is a small lake. since the lake was frozen many people were ice-skating on it. however, truth to be told, i m not sure if this lake had more than 5 deadly mm 'icing' on the surface....thats what i call 'preventing overpopulation'.
we were watching them through the window of one of our new fav restaurants...i forgot the name, but whatever. the food was great, but if any of u would have seen us order there or any other place in beijing, u'd call us crazy. here u don't just order one dish and then its urs to eat. in china everyone eats everything. whats on the table is for the whole communist bunch...seriously, sometimes its pretty unnerving: u order rice with vegtables and u ar soooo loking forward to eat them, but as soon as it arrives at ur table, 5 pairs of chopsticks are already heaving 'your' food on different plates. mmmmmhhhhhhh, so what u do is, u order more than one dish, just to make shure u aso get some of the good stuff. and in my case, since i have the bad luck to always order the wrong thing, i just order many different things to decrease the chances of getting the shitty stuff.
so, to come to the point, yesterday we ordered about 7 dishes. one was the chinese adaption of apfelstrudel, very yummy.
and since yesterday was special, we even odered a 'milk te' instead of the usual coke. alex got a honey melon tea, and bei gott thats how it tasted.
well, now we are back in the agency having fun with the fish and the lumalife technology. haha, ok, i need to concentrate and finish my mc donalds coffee.

here you see one corner of DMG where you can go brainstorming in little rooms behind those doors. This room is still under construction and there also will be a huge aquarium on the ceiling. It is really surprising when you come out of the elevator because that is not what you expect in the 25th.

and of course MTV China also has a own pimp my ride show

MTV CHINA representz "fancy cribs"

come on. i think it really comes close doesnt it...

ok, ok, everything is fine. you don´t have to worry we are not dentists - it´s just smog and spray glue and you can see that those particles really boost our creative standards

seems like you will see some pictures...

ok, we lied. actually we work at a dentist and have no clue what this advertising stuff is about - now you know it

work hard, party harder

that in fact is alex and mine new motto. last week has been exhausting. even though the pitch has been postponed over and over again, the pressure was keept up by simply not telling us. ;) well, it was worth it, by saturday we were finished with our layouts, even i...haha. and now we are working on vw, which is great, because the tonality is much more western, no more dragons and frogs and what not.
gael, our cd, just resigned and is off to singapore or someting. which leaves us with the all-chinese creative team..mmmhhh, so, there we go again: frogs and dragons.
saturday, however, was the night. we went out with sebastian, the german account planner and went to a club called kais. MY NEW FAVORITE CLUB IN THE WORLD. seriously, after being in all these mallorca clubs with chinese flair and hookers, it is wonderful to find a club that looks like crap and all the people dance because they like the music, not the guy next to them. Furthermore, the wodka redbull costs 1 euro, so thats convincing as well. there were many expats, so that was a nice change. not only chinese girls and guys. so, alex and i had great fun. man, i love that club and wodka redbull. haha, anyway, we went on to the suzi wongs, 80's LA. Honestly, i didnt really noticed anything anymore....i just sorted all the business cards we got on the way.
i think i m getting robins attitude, work during the week and go out hardcore on the weekend. every weekened!
so, now i will go and get some coffee.

Buy more plasmascreens for africa!

so, here we are again.
first i have to say: I hate the chinese internet!!!!!! it takes me 10 min to upload flickr, not to mention the total disability to upload pics on this blog. some shitty earthquake in tailand has "destroyed" the chinese internet, maybe it was simply the government, who knows. i have tons of pics already i would love to share, but maybe i should describe them instead...?! ;)
anyway, working on the final pitch here at dmg is opening my eyes concerning the possibility of just IGNORING budget completely. HA! i'm loving it. they are creating the most extraorinary techniques to re-launch the brand with new ads/tvc/events, etc. in real life this would cost the company millions, billions and gold barrels. as if the new lead car is not flashy enough.
now, people from the shanghai office are coming in to support the dmg force. haha, and alex and i right in the middle, thinking about giant winding flatscreens that communicate the concept. Its great to be free of limits and simply play around with ideas without killing them because of budget issues. we could probably feed 3/4 of africa with the money we need to built our pop up events. its advertising-made in china.
now, its time to go for lunch and alex and i are wondering if we want noodle soup or noodle soup. mmmmmhhhh.
the food here is great by the way. u can pay standart european prices or go with local fares. the food is about the same, maybe u pay for hygene but who cares, as long as u dont get sick.
even if i have wrote it before: A SIX PACK CORONA COSTS 85 CENTS!!!!!!!!!!!!
so, go die of envy. ;)

Unexplored species vanished in my soupbowl, wonderful!

as the internet still doesn´t work properly i convinced myself to write a little....instead of showing you the wonderful and probably award winning photos we made :-( So many people ask me about the food situation. Well it really depends how brave or open you are and how much money you want to spend. A few days ago we crashed into a japanese place with a sushi buffet - 12 Euro (incl. drinks for both of us). Hotels are relatively expensive, we paid 30 Euro for our meal. you´ll get everything from "bavarian pretzels with paulaner" to "feet of some animals you can´t pronounce". The common food is noodle soup with beef, dumplings and vegetables. Of course it is presented differently from the way you might know it. Such a meal costs (including drinks and for two adults) about 50RMB (5Euro). You can get it a lot cheaper but for us that´s kind of the bottom line (and don´t ask me what it takes to find out where this bottom line is to set). *
However, it´s not possible to suffer from hunger - but you quickly suffer from misunderstandings. We met hundreds of chinese people yet but we can count the english speaking on one hand. From those, 4 work in the agency. And don´t come to the idea that taxi drivers know words like left, right, stop.... Well, usually they know what the phrase "bye bye" means and....jej that´s it. So we hardly try to improve our chinese abilities.

At the moment we´re making some popup event designs and thinking hardly about more ideas for the olympics 2008 here. I bet the couriers here make a fortune at the moment because internet isn´t available and pictures have to be sent.

Hey, is there anyone who knows some more good movies??? - we bought so many that we are out of ideas.

* brrrrgh, I still feel this one flavor on my tounge (day 10)

Other Quakes

Unfortunately the internet broke down and that doesn´t mean "our"
internet but the entire "chinese" internet. That´s because of some earthquakes, or seaquakes or other quakes... Anyway the internet is really very slow so that we can´t post the pictures we made yet. Just to update you a little bit with some facts: apartment=clean; creative director=nice; food=yummy; taxi=1euro; vuittons=fake (day 8)

huhu