Month of Mai, 2008

Some years ago, at a nice dinner with some geeks after a programming contest, somebody presented to me the following problem: Given the numbers 1, 3, 4 and 6, find an expression that yields 24. The expression can use addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, parentheses as much as you want. You have to use all the numbers exactly once. Don’t concatenate them: 1, 3 is not 13… As an example, 4 * (6 — 1) + 3 would be a valid expression. The only bad thing about that one is that it’s result is only 23, one short of 24. Can you find a better one?

The first impression of Switzerland was seeing the Lake of Constance from above. Just fifteen minutes later, the plane already landed at Zurich Airport. Such a small country and yet… it has a big place in my heart. Read more…

Say it with songs… since I don’t have that much time at the moment this will do nicely. Pictures and more detailed reports will follow in a couple of days. In the meantime hum along…

My travel mates, Santhosh and SiddharthIt’s four o’clock in the morning. I arrived in KL two hours ago and am now sitting in a spacious but rather empty internet cafe. There’s plenty of time till shops open and busses to the airport start to drive. I’ll use it to write down and share with you some memories from the past week. Read on…

It’s nine o’clock at night, I’m sitting in a remote village in the Jungle of Malaysia (well, there is internet, so not that remote.) Still, I hear the cicadas, the legs feel a bit tired from the walk to Gua Telinga, my head is full of memories from the Orang Asli¹, it’s a very good feeling.

This is the first of a series of articles about my current travel through Malaysia and Sumatra. First stop: Pulau Perhentian. The name means “Stopover Island” in Malay. And that’s what we did: a short stopover on one of Malaysia’s most beautiful islands. Read more…

Epilogue — It means you’ve arrived at the last part of a story. The climax has been passed and now all that’s left is rounding it off, making it end in a pleasant way. That’s roughly how I felt, walking out of my last exam this morning…