Category: Luxembourg

Thank you for the SPAM, ADR!

With all that foreign spam overwhelming my company’s mailboxes, I was deeply moved when I received an unsolicited newsletter from what blogger Charles Betz called “the far-right ridiculous Luxembourgish party Alternativ Demokratesch Reformpartei (ADR)” today.

Finally I get some spam made in Luxembourg (even if its being sent from a server in Germany)! Thank you, Alternativ Demokratesch Reformpartei <jengelen@chd.lu>! My spam filtering software (MailWasher Pro [affiliate link]) was so surprised that it couldn’t decide how to classify this newsletter. I chose not to delete it right away as I’m still working on a project to print spam on toilet paper but to click on the unsubscribe link instead. This led me to a “communication agency” in Germany and the following text appeared on my screen:

Please switch off your spam filter to receive our e-mail

“The newsletter is being cancelled. You’ll receive an e-mail with a link for deactivation”. Wow. A truly brilliant system, testament to the superior intelligence of its customers. I click on a link in an e-mail to unsubscribe and they want me to click on another link in another e-mail. But there’s more: Unlike the original newsletter, my spam filtering software classified this second e-mail as “possible spam” because it didn’t have a “from”-address:
You may unsubscribe now - if you’ve received our malformed e-mail

The message itself also looked kind of messy because they needlessly put a multipart boundary inside without defining it first. I must admit I was a bit disappointed when I clicked on the second link and saw a confirmation that I had successfully unsubsribed. That was just way to easy. I’d suggest alternative unsubcription procedures involving pictures of ADR politicians and hotornot.com but I have to do some real work now.

Edit: Should you receive spam from ADR or anyone else in Luxembourg as an individual (not as a company), you can do and should do something against it! Consult the website of the commission nationale pour la protection des données (CNPD) to read more about your rights. Article 11 of the “Loi du 30 mai 2005” (Page 1172) sounds interesting (up to 1 year imprisonment and fines up to 125000 EUR), though I’m not sure yet if it can be applied to newsletters sent by political parties.

To put things in perspective:

“Fighting spam, spyware and malicious software: Member States should do better, says Commission

[…] “It is time to turn the repeated political concern about spam into concrete actions to fight spam,” said Viviane Reding Commissioner for Information Society and Media.  […]

Massive volumes of unsolicited email are still being sent: Security firms Symantec and MessageLabs estimate that spam is between 54% and 85% of all email. In 2005 Ferris Research estimated spam to cost €39 billion worldwide […].”

My favourite restaurants in Luxembourg

SushiI just downloaded and installed the new Skype 3.1 which now includes SkypeFind. This feature “lets you recommend and share your favourite local businesses with the entire Skype community”. A nice idea, hopefully it won’t get overwhelmed with spam like the comment function of my blog.

So far, there were only two restaurants listed in Luxembourg, so I added my 3 favourite places. After providing valuable free content to Skype, I’m going to post my mini-reviews here as well. I might come back later to update this post (there are so many great restaurants in Luxembourg it’s hard not to gain weight). As I’m a vegetarian, the restaurants mentioned below are veggie-friendly. Should you happen to know any other great restaurants in Luxembourg that you think I should check out, please leave a comment (note that I don’t like very formal places and no, seafood isn’t vegetarian even if Chi-Chi’s thinks otherwise).

Restaurant Royal Chine: My favourite restaurant in Luxembourg due to the great choice of vegetarian dishes. Of course, they serve traditional Chinese food, too, as well as some Korean specialities (like Kimchi). It seems there’s a Chinese restaurant on every street in Luxembourg now, but this one really stands out and I suspect many of the friends and family members who come to visit me actually just want me to take them to the Royal Chine. 😉

Disclosure note: I’m good friends with the owners and designed their webpage (for free). However, this doesn’t make anything I wrote above less accurate or true. In fact, you can take advantage of my “guanxi” and send me whatever sincere comment you might have concerning this restaurant and I’ll mention it to the lǎo bǎn next time I go there. Or you could pretend being a friend of mine to see if you get a discount.

Restaurant Star of Asia: Lovely Indian restaurant with great food, relaxed atmosphere and very friendly service. Popular with locals and expats alike. My favourite dish is Bhagara Baigan (Aubergine curry) plus Chilli Naan (Indian bread). I’m getting hungry right now just from writing this comment. 😉

Disclosure note: I’m good friends with the owners, designed their webpage (for free) and also did an ad for them which was printed in Paperjam magazine. This shouldn’t make you think that I’d write an embellished review. Quite to the contrary, I wouldn’t consider designing a website for a bad restaurant!

Ristorante Dal Notaro: This would be the perfect Italian restaurant – if only it was closer to my home! 😉 Seriously, I love going there because it’s always a totally enjoyable experience. Great food, great atmosphere, what more could you want? Wine, you say? They have a superb selection of great (mostly Italian) wines, too!
The menu is apparently only available in Italian, but you can always ask the waiter to translate. My favourite dishes: Melanzane e mozzarella (starters) and Pappardelle alla trilogia di funghi.

Disclosure note: Nope. I wish, but there’s nothing to disclose. No connection other than me often going there.

BTW, the “sushi” picture above isn’t really related to this article as it was taken at a Japanese restaurant in Taichung, Taiwan. No luck finding a veggie-friendly Japanese restaurant in Luxembourg so far.