The Marcos Kirsch Experience®

Jaco (my cousin) and I went last week to Budapest for a few days (original plan was to fly to Istambul, but tickets were sold out).

The trip was a lot of fun. Budapest is a beautiful city with lots of history. We were visiting places all day for four days straights non-stop and barely covered what we wanted to see. We saw museums, the Parliament, Statue Park, amazing buildings and even got to visit a Thermal Bath for a bizarre experience surrounded by middle-aged, fat, nude Hungarians. I have uploaded some photos from the trip (sorry - no naked Hungarians).

As promised:

This past weekend I flew to Mexico City in order to attend the wedding of my very good friends Pepe and Avital. They were both my next door neighboors at the kibbutz (in each side, different rooms).

Pepe and I go back a long time. He’s a marvelous acrobat (video will be posted in the future). He can play videogames like no one can (he finished Evander Holyfield’s Real Deal Boxing for Sega Genesis in 72 hours playing as El Cupacabras . Nonstop). He got me hooked on Lost.
It was a blast getting together with them both and the rest of the gang that made it to the wedding (some of who I hadn’t seen in 10+ years). They were all very immature back in 1995 and I’m proud to say that they haven’t changed a bit.

During my limited stay in Mexico City, I also got to see some of my family (Bobe Sonia, Tia Chela, Martha, Jacky, Becky, Jenny, Simon, Malka, Miriam) and friends who had nothing to do with the wedding (Aizik, Goldman). I ate a lot, saw a true Mexico City bank robbery, ate a lot, went to the market to buy fish, and ate a lot.

Jenny went to the market…

And of course I’ve got to thank my great friends Abraham and Galit Braverman who hosted me this weekend and put up with all my shit. I know it’s not easy. You are welcome to come visit me in Austin, we’ll have a blast. Appropriately, when I went to their wedding, I stayed with Pepe.

Photo album here.

And stay tuned for “Spectacular Flying Pepe: The Video“… coming soon to this blog.

I’m typing this as I fly back from San Juan to Dallas, since I have no more DVDs to watch. It was a very nice change of pace flying last Thursday to Puerto Rico (pronounced Puelto Lico) for a week on a recruiting trip with National Instruments. Luis Orozco, Nick Marquez and myself flew to the town of Mayagüez, on the west side of the Island. There is a big campus of the Universidad de Puerto Rico that specializes in Engineering (computer, electrical, mechanical… you name it).

While I could go on here telling you about our adventures involving missed flights (screw you American Airlines and your hour-long check-in lines), very small airplanes, giant radiotelescopes, man-eating plants, etc, I’ll just let you see the photos yourself (after the commercial break).

(more…)

Some items in my packing list:

• Cellphone
• Cellphone charger
• Electric shaver
• Electric shaver charger
• Nintendo DS
• Nintendo DS charger
• iPod
• iPod charger
• Computer
• Computer charger
• Digital camera
• Digital camera charger

Am I doing something wrong?

[Update June 30 2006] Added digital camera, I knew I was missing something.

Last Sunday, in Monterrey, I went to the new (opened in February 2005) explanade and giant flag next to the Obispado museum. Since it was such a clear day, we took the opportunity tu go up there and take a nicke 360° QuickTime VR panorama of the city (basically, I did the driving and Moi did the photographing with his fancy tripod). It’s a very high quality file of over 7 MB, so be patient and make sure to zoom in to the details!

Some cool things to look for:

• ITESM
• Obispado
• Puente Atirantado (hanging bridge)
• Loma Larga Tunnel
• Rio 70 Cinema
• Bibiloteca Magna (UANL Library)
• Cerro de la Silla (easy to spot)
• My big butt
• Alfa Planetarium
• Fundidora Park

Enjoy!

Natalia Suayter - click on image to zoom

Meet the extremely hot and first ever Penthouse Magazine Mexico Pet (I’m talking about the girl in the pink dress, not the dude on the right).
This is Argentinean-born model Natalia Suayter. I met her at the opening of Final Feliz, a shop owned by Melvo last Saturday in Monterrey. In the interest of maintaining the R-rating on this blog, I am not linking to any other photos of her. Feel free to find those youself (hint - she appears in the same number as Pilar Montenegro of Garibaldi fame).

Quiz: Who looks happier in the photo? Her or me?

Oh yeah, she’s not really my girlfriend: I don’t think her mom would approve of me.

Update Oct 6, 2007: Para evitar malos entendidos, especialmente entre gente que no lea bien inglés: La foto la tomé en la inauguración de la tienda de un amigo. A la modelo invitada Natalia nunca la había visto antes y nunca la he vuelto a ver después. Una disculpa si esto ocasionó confusiones.

Once again, I went to Monterrey last Friday. Joana was there with Liat and Joelle (who are now 13 months old). The girls are awesome but they like Moi more than they like me. That’s not surprising, most people like Moi more than they like me.

The drive home was quite an adventure, including a trip to downtown San Antonio to pick my cousing Becky up, a nice chat with a law enforcement officer in Pearsall Texas, a trip to the 26th km inside of Mexico, then back to Nuevo Laredo to get a tourist visa for Shaina, then back to the 26th km, and a burned alternator.

On Saturday, I got to go to Ilana and Yoni’s wedding which was very nice. There were a ton of Monterrey Exiles (a group I’m proudly a member of) that made the trip for what was the first wedding in the community in three or four years (how sad is that?). Very nice seeing them all, and also very nice to hear some of them actually read this blog (yeah, there’s a good chance that I’m talking about you). The photo of my dad sitting in a shoestore holding my mom’s purse seemed to be especially popular.

Last, but not least, on Sunday I bought 70 tacos from the always tasty Tacos Lara (proudly clogging arteries since 1968). I don’t remember the exact breakdown but we bought everything except for carnitas. I didn’t eat all of them by myself though. If I had, the drive back would have been rough for the other passengers.

Because you asked for it:

Moi set up a website in which to upload photos from the wedding.
I collected and cleaned up around 300 photos from 4 different cameras (thanks to Chocho and Joel for sending their photos right away).

You can add your witty comments to the photos, so do it.

Also, come back soon, I have two funny videos I will be posting shortly.

Congratulations to Jacquie and Eli. I wish them a happy life, lots of naches and lots of cousins for me.

http://laboda.sandler.com.mx

At around 10 PM last night I got back from a full of adventures, fun and exciting weekend in Mexico City. I saw many friends and family that I hadn’t seen in years. Moi and I are in the process of collecting the many memory cards filled with photos and will post them online soon.

Many of you know that as of Sunday I became the oldest member of my extended family who’s still single, on both the Kirsch and the Sandler sides. Some say: "the pressure is on". I say: "A picture is worth a thousand words".

Below: A crappy cellphone photo of my dad, sitting in a shoestore, holding my mom’s purse.

The label reads (translated to English):

This bottle will be exchanged for a
bottle of Champagne the day of my wedding.
Thanks for accompanying me in
my Bar Mitzvah.
Yoni
January 18, 1992

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I will go great lengths to get free stuff (I once drove 60 minutes and made a two hour line to get a free $5.50 burrito… and it was worth it).

So, in January 18, 1992 I put away this little bottle, saved it for 13 years, went to Monterrey last April, brought it to Austin, took it to Boston and finally carried it in my pocket to Yoni and Einat’s wedding last Sunday (is that a small kosher wine bottle in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? people kept saying, for some reason). Needless to say, I expect my champagne bottle to arrive in the mail anytime now.

On a more serious note, it was of course nice to see so many people I hadn’t seen in years and to be at my friends’ wedding. Thanks to Ricky (Big Richard) Berner for hosting me and taking me to eat schwarma.

Some pictures from the weekend have been posted. Click here to see them.

We went down to New Braunfels for tubing today. We were a total of 11 people and 3 coolers (so 14 tubes). You basically sit on a rubber tire for 4 hours or so while drinking beer (or any other liquid you bring). Usually you get horribly sunburned, scarred and disfigured for life; but a good combination of industrial strength sunscreen lotion (did you ever see RoboCop?) and clouds saved me.

Some advise for future floaters: avoid banging your head with the rocks!