Not all trademarks make much sense. Especially where whisky is concerned

For example, the other day, I was wandering through the night in Jerusalem like a proper tourist. I sat down on a bench some bar, I can’t even remember its name. But I can remember their menu promising me ‘Monkey Shoulder’ whisky. I was astonished, but not for long. The name didn’t quite do it for me. But there you go. No Talisker, no Jura, no Macallan. Not even Glenfiddich or the notorious Chivas. Ladies and Gentlemen! We give you …. ‘Monkey Shoulder’.

Read on: a few more “whiskys” I recall …

I have read and heard a lot about the about the excavations in Jerusalem, around the Holy Temple and under its walls. I have seen the pictures, licked my lips in anticipation but I only managed to visit the ruins of the city and one of the newly discovered tunnels (not the main one though) that runs under the Western Wall.

Then all of a sudden – a surprise!

Down the stairs, under the ground, from level to level, from floor to floor. How many of them have not been excavated yet?? Along the Roman cobbles, under the 700-year-old Turkish renovations, along the ancient walls of the Temple. Wow! I never even dreamed of it – but it really happened!

What is hoary antiquity for New York, is just last night for Jerusalem…

It might have come exactly on schedule, but my 49^th birthday was still something of a surprise.

After all, it’s quite a date … and it inspired some feelings of awe and bewilderment. Does it really mean I’m going to be 50 next? Wow! I guess I should start preparing for that. It’s a good round number, but given my profession it’s more appropriate to count in hexadecimal numbers. Suddenly I’m about 31 again – which looks much nicer. Maybe from now on I should count my age in hexadecimal numbers; I’ll worry less, and people won’t feel they have to organize a big 50^th birthday for me any time soon :)

This year’s birthday turned out quite unusual – for all my travels, it was the first time I celebrated my birthday while on the road. There was only time for a small dinner before boarding, then I was back on the road again.

I think that’s all for now. Thank you everyone for all your birthday wishes!

Next stop – France.

Here we were celebrating the 10^th b-day of the KL France office. The goings-on deserve a post of their own really. For now though, it’s down the Champs-Élysées and onwards for some speedy surveying of the familiar spectacular Parisian places of interest I never tire of checking out…

Read on: My top-three fave places in Paris…

My fall season globetrotting continues from country to country, city to city… What’s nice about it this year is that the weather just about everywhere is real good. My autumn coat hasn’t left the corner of my suitcase once yet.

Alas, the itinerary – as always – has been very intense – an intenserary! – and some of the ports of call have been decidedly un-resort-like, so dipping into some nice warm sea sadly hasn’t worked out. Until today! For here I am on the beach of Tel Aviv. Hurray! After the very tense official part of my visit to Israel I finally got to the shores of the Med for some serious chilling. Phew.

But my beaching it in the Middle East is hardly worthy of a blog post in itself. However, while vegging out, I noticed in the corner of my eye a digital display on the side of the lifeguards’ tower. It took it in turns to show the time of day and the current temperature, much like similar digital displays the world over. But this one was a little different…

Read on: a brainteaser with digital clocks…

What ho, folks! Here I am in the center of London, in Soho, the area of London that seems to have just about everything – from the salubrious to the seedy, and from the chic to the cheeky. I’m staying in the outstandingly original Ham Yard hotel. I wasn’t expecting unexpectedness here – but then I didn’t look it up beforehand – we just needed a place in Soho as I’d a few engagements nearby, so it was booked on the fly. This hotel is however full of surprises, the most astonishing of which was up on the roof…we found there a huge vegetable garden covering the whole rooftop! In the center of a megalopolis!

Read on: no fuddy-duddy old hotel for old fuddy-duddies…

Is there any (Mac) OS X-specific malware around?

Oh yes. But for some odd reason I haven’t said anything interesting on this topic for quite a while…

The last time was two and a half years ago. Yes, that’s how long it’s been since the global Flashback worm outbreak that infected 700 thousand Macs worldwide. The security industry made quite a bit of noise about it (and quickly disabled the Flashback botnet), but since then – mostly silence… It might seem to some that ever since there’s been a complete lull on the Mac-malware front and not one bit of iMalware has disturbed Apple Bay’s calm waters…

But they’d be wrong…

Sure, if you compare the threat levels of picking up some malware on different platforms, at the top of the table, by a long way, as ever, is the most widely used platform – Microsoft Windows. Quite a way behind it is Android – a relatively new kid on the block. Yep, over the past three years the cyber-vermin has been seriously bombarding the poor little green robot with exponentially increasing levels of malicious activity. Meanwhile, in the world of iPhones and iPads, except for very rare cyber-espionage attacks, there have been hardly any successful attacks thereon (despite using various exotic methods). It’s a similar story with Macs too – things are relatively peaceful compared to other platforms; but of late there have been… stirrings – about which I’ll be talking in this post.

Briefly, a few numbers – kinda like an executive summary:

• The numbers of new for-Mac malware instances detected in the last few years are already in the thousands;
• In the first eight months of 2014, 25 different ‘families’ of Mac malware were detected;
• The likelihood of an unprotected Mac becoming infected by some Mac-specific-unpleasantness has increased to about three percent.

In 2013 alone @kaspersky detected ~1700 malware samples for OS XTweet

Read on: let’s dig deeper and look at the situation from a malware expert PoV…

I’d heard plenty of good stuff about Hungarian spas and hot springs. And I’d been to the country many times since first visiting it in 1998. But somehow there was just never the time to immerse myself in its thermal waters. But last weekend I made amends. And what can I say? It’s mega-cool hot! Alas, I didn’t have much room for my camera when in my trunks, so almost all the photos here are from the official site of the particular Hungarian thermal paradise we visited…

Soooo, the Gellért Baths in Budapest…

Read on: A palace with thermal baths…

There’s an unusual feeling you get… when you sit by the window on a plane waiting for the end of boarding and your flight to begin, observing the workers shoving the luggage into the hold of the plane… when suddenly you see that they’re all done and walk off… but a single suitcase remains of the ground – all on its lonesome. Big and black. And it’s YOUR suitcase!

Hold on… that looks familiar…

This is, indeed, not ok…

From a tourist’s perspective Washington, D.C. is far from the most interesting city in the world. I’d even go so far as to say it’s somewhat boring.

The Washington monument, Lincoln Memorial, White House, National Air and Space Museum, and various other museums… and that, to me, seems just about it for the average tourist. So, if you’re ever stateside but don’t have loads of days to fill, I think it’s safe to pass on this place and get stuck into others, like San Francisco and New York, and then perhaps Arizona (in particular the Grand Canyon), California (especially the redwoods), and the volcanic north-west in Washington state. And if it’s July-September – why not Alaska? I could go on, of course, but the places I’ve listed I think are among the best.

But I was in D.C. this time, and in need of some touristic tidbits to tide me over for a day. It wasn’t looking promising… But then…

To my astonishment, I discovered that in Washington, D.C. there are a few discreet places which are full to the brim with treasures relating to the not-so-long but oh-so rich history of the U S of A and its empire. I visited one of them, and was bowled over by what it had to offer. It was the USS Sequoia, the former presidential yacht.

Read On: proudly serving the presidents…