As it took me more time to figure this out than I wanted to invest into it (i.e. more than five minutes), I figured I would spare other people the trouble and put this online.
Follow this link for a Max patcher and Arduino code for sending serial data from Arduino to Max:
some more ramblings and random bits of information can be found here: Building Stuff: Arduino & Max/Msp/Jitter - Serial Communication
a project I did using this code can be found here: Building Stuff: Maybe Max isnt as terrible as I first thought
cheers
p.