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Update March 10, 2011: Course info and dates can now be found on cuisinechinoise.lu.

Update August 18, 2010: New Chinese cooking courses starting in September, now also with advanced courses. Download PDF (with registration form) or visit mielelifestyle.lu for further information.

Update May 3rd, 2010: New Chinese cooking courses in May/June! Download PDF (with registration form) or visit mielelifestyle.lu for further information.

My good friend Tung-Chih Lee is back in Luxembourg and decided to start giving Chinese cooking lessons (he used to be the chef at the Royal Chine in Limpertsberg). Cooking lessons begin in March and are going to be held at the Miele Cooking Studio in Gasperich (5, rue François Hogenberg) from 18:30h to 21:00h on the following dates:

Cooking Course 1: March 1, 8, 15 and 22 (Mondays)
Cooking Course 2: March 3, 10, 17 and 24 (Wednesdays)
Cooking Course 3: March 4, 11, 18 and 25 (Thursdays)

The course language is French, though I'm sure Tung-Chih is going going to do more actual cooking than talking. The price is 200€ which boils down to a palatable 20€/hour (and you get to eat what you cooked).

The maximum number of participants per course is limited to 10.

Please contact ecole.culinaire.chinoise@gmail.com or call 40 00 80 (after 10am) to check availability and then use this PDF form I just scanned (or something similar) to confirm your participation.

Rechts das Original aus der Ukraine, links das Video aus Österreich:

Doppelt peinlicher Vergleich auf YoutubeDoubler

Hier drei Ausreden für das österreichische Bundesheer (zum Klauen freigegeben):

1. "Wir haben das Drehbuch aus Kostengründen in der Ukraine schreiben lassen."
2. "Niemand von uns hat das andere Video je zuvor gesehen, bei dieser unglaublichen Übereinstimmung handelt sich um einen Fehler in der Matrix."
3. "Das Video aus der Ukraine ist so schlecht, da haben wir uns gedacht, das machen wir noch schlechter, dann ist es schon wieder genial."

How do you remove 3cm of solid ice from a sidewalk? Unfortunately, watching the Top Gear Polar Special had done nothing to prepare me for this challenge¹. I soon realized I should have spent my time diligently sweeping away the snow before it had the time to turn into a layer of hard, seriously slippery ice.

It was too late for that, so I tried pouring de-icing salt on it and smashing it to pieces with a snow shovel. More than an hour later, I had only partially cleared a narrow path and was about to run out of salt and motivation. I realized I needed better equipment, so I headed for the next DIY store.

It was a huge disappointment: No flame throwers, no giant electric heating blankets and more worryingly, no salt². While looking at almost every tool they had, trying to figure out if it would be suitable for ice removal, I eventually came to the conclusion that they're better equipped to handle zombie attacks. Just when I was about to give up, I came across exotic gardening tool no. 3192 by Gardena. It looked like a giant razor blade that might be able to cut through the ice and then lift it up from below, breaking the ice instead of just scraping off a bit.

It worked exactly like I had hoped and I removed the rest of the ice in a few minutes. I didn't even stop to take pictures, which is why the second picture below (taken today) shows the tool breaking some compressed snow instead of real ice (conditions were far worse yesterday):

¹ I was preparing for the day after they run out of salt to de-ice the roads. Still looking for a modified Toyota Hilux.

² Apparently sold out everywhere else in Luxembourg, too.

I'm not an Apple fanboy (my phone's a secondhand Nokia N-something), but I'm usually impressed by their products from the perspective of someone who studied (strategic) marketing¹. It took me a while, however, to understand what the iPad was supposed to be. Is it really just a giant iPhone that can't make calls and doesn't have a camera?

Yes it is, and that's brilliant. First of all, because it's so basic it'll be cheap to make. Then, they just have to find some suckers who'll want to pay a lot of money for it. Hitler doesn't like it and you might not like it, but you're probably not a recently laid-off employee over the age of 40 who used to earn lots of money. These people - and I figured this out all by myself - are Apples target group: They haven't maxed out their credit cards yet (recently laid-off), could use an oversized gadget to boost their ego, appreciate the big screen (presbyopia usually starts at this age) and don't actually need a phone because - let's face it - in this economy nobody's going to call them back with a job offer.

It all makes sense now, doesn't it? Remember, you read it here first (and I didn't make a single MaxiPad joke).

¹That and banking and finance. It's like I wanted to study pure evil.

You might have heard about the incident in LUX yesterday where a landing Cargolux Boeing 747-400F touched the roof of a maintenance van with its main gear tires.

A picture of the damaged van now appeared on PPRuNe and shows that this was indeed a very close call with disaster.

Update: Wort.lu writes that a nose gear tire of the plane had to be replaced and that the incident was apparently caused by "communication problems" between the tower and the aircraft, though it is not clear yet if human or technical failure is to blame.