Transmongolian Express Part II
This is a continuation to my previous post, with the second part of my summer travel on the transmongolian route.
The arrival to Mongolia was interesting, with very nice views in the train of the typical mongolian ger’s. Mongolia is a country with a third of its population still nomadic, which makes for an interesting countryside.
We stayed in Mongolia for three days… based in Ulaanbaatar, the first day we walked around and visited the city. Highly recommended is the Gandantegchinlen Monastery, which includes a couple budhist temples and a few buildings. The central area of the city is Sükhbaatar Square and the area around Peace Avenue road. There are also a couple of sightseeing places in the hills nearby, a couple museums and a few shopping centres, but there is not much more to see in the city.
The second day we decided to hire a driver, who basically drove us wherever we wanted, and helped in recommending places and explaining stuff. This is definitely the best way to move around mongolia, as in many places you will encounter people who don’t speak english and the driver will help you out and translate. We went to a couple places, including a huge equestrian figure of Genghis Khan (supposedly the biggest equastrian figure in the world) and to Gorkhi-Terelj National Park which has, besides a turtle-shaped rock, a very nice buddhist monastery and Ger’s prepared for tourists. We decided to stay for the night at one of the Ger’s below the buddhist monastery, and it was an unforgettable experience. At the park we also took rides on camels and we went 2 hourse horse-riding.
After Ulaanbaatar, we took the transmongolian train again now headed to Beijing. Although the train seemed to be pretty much the same as the first one, this was operated by chinese people and you could really tell the difference in the (scarce) service. Again, this meant two days in the train, but only one night. Still, it seemed as a long trip and we spent quite a few hours crossing the border between Mongolia and China, where besides doing passport and visa control, they also have to change the width of the train tracks. This is an interesting process for any engineer, since they lift the whole train, including passengers, remove the weels, adjust the tracks, and put chinese wheels on.
The arrival to Beijing was a bit overwhelming. The city is huge, full of a mixture of mist and pollution, and overall quite dirty. The differences in cultures can be a bit shocking, specially the spitting and peeing on the streets. However the city turned to be very very interesting. In beijing we visited the typical tourist places… from Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, to the Great Wall (at Badaling) and the Summer Palace.
For the next and last stop, we took a night express train to Shanghai. This turned out to be a very modern train which even included a tv for every bed (although all movies were in Chinese). The train arrives in the early morning to Shanghai, which is an amazing city. It is not as historical as Beijing, but it is full of lights and nightlife. Overall it feels like people are ‘cleaner’ in Shanghai and you don’t see as often things such as spitting. In Shanghai we went to the Pearl Tower, a sight-seeing tunnel (with no sight to see) and the Expo 2010 (which was very impressive), but overall the city is more about walking around and living it rather than visiting tourist places. I have to admit I really liked the city and would be a very interesting experience to live there for a while.
For the trip back home, we started out with the Maglev Train to the airport, whose typical maximum speed is of 431 km/h, although it has reached 501 km/h. This was an amazing trip, although very short… about 7 minutes for 30 Km. From Shanghai we flew to Moscow (with Aeroflot) and from there back to Madrid. An amazing trip which I will never forget.
Transmongolian Express Part I
This summer a few friends and I decided to take a different approach on vacations and change the typical beach summer holidays for a new adventure. The challenge: to cross Asia through the transsiberian railway network.
The challenge actually started quite a few months before the trip, as we organized and bought everything on our own. First, being 7 people in total for the trip, it was a tedious work to get to agreements, but with time we learned to be more efficient. Once we had agreed on the route planned and the dates, we set to buy airplane tickets, train tickets, make hostel reservations and arrange visa permits. The plan was to start in Russia, go to lake Baikal, take the trans-mongolian train to Ulaanbaatar, continue to Beijing and end in Shanghai.
Buying the airplane tickets was an easy task with Aeroflot, a russian airline with relatively good service. Buying the train tickes however proved to be a bit more complicated. We ended up buying the train tickets through local agencies, as international trains cannot be bought online. Obtaining the 3 required visas proved also to be a challenge, especially the russian which requires and invitation to the country and hence we had to do it through a travel agency (with the additional costs implied).
The trip started out by flying to St. Petersburg after an overnight flight to Moscow, where we spent a couple days to enjoy the city. We had the opportunity to visit the Peterhof palace and enjoy the russian ballet with Anna Karenina.
Afterwards we flew to Moscow, where we spent another couple of days. Here we made the typical visits to the Kremlin, to Lenin’s mausoleum, the Red square and other areas around the city. I had the great pleasure to meet an old russian friend from university, who gave us the insider tour and took us around all the city. Overall we had a great time in Moscow and it couldn’t have been better.
The transsiberian train route starts in Moscow, but because of time constraints, we decided to cheat a bit and do the first leg of the journey by air. We flew directly to Irkutsk, where we took a local (illegal) taxi to Listvyanka, next to the lake Baikal. Here we stayed for the night in a very nice cabin overseeing the lake. The next day, we began the train journey from Irkutsk to Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia. This meant 2 nights in train including 7 hours being held up to cross the border. The train was a very interesting experience, meeting new people and even getting to know yourself a bit better 
Russia overall was a great country to visit, and I feel like I need to go back to Moscow and St. Petersburg sometime soon. People are not very used to tourists and the language barrier can make things difficult at times, but it was totally worth it.
It was a long trip and I don’t want to bore you, so I will continue on another post but I leave you with a few pictures I hope you will enjoy.
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- UK Pavilion, Expo Shanghai 2010
Update semestral
Aunque tengo el blog más olvidado de lo que me gustaría, el poco tiempo libre, la poca disponibilidad de acceso a Internet, y la cada vez mayor invasión de múltiples sitios sociales dejan cada vez menos oportunidades para escribir un par de líneas por aquí. No obstante intentaré romper la rutina un poco para dar una breve actualización de los últimos meses.
He estado por proyecto desde finales de octubre desplazado en Santiago de Compostela, Galicia. En general ha sido una experiencia muy positiva: el proyecto (un plan estratégico de telecomunicaciones) ha sido interesante, el equipo de trabajo ha hecho más que soportables las largas horas de trabajo, y la vida en Santiago me ha permitido conocer la cultura de la región.
En el lado negativo, tengo que destacar el largo invierno que ha sido, con poca luz, algo de frío, pero sobretodo mucha lluvia. Además, he estado un poco aislado del mundo exterior ya que en el piso (en casco histórico) no contaba con cobertura de móvil y por tanto tampoco de Internet.
Pero mi participación en el proyecto termina, y la próxima será la última semana que vaya a Santiago (por ahora). Ahora toca volver a la oficina y aunque ya tengo otro proyecto en puerta, será importante pararme un momento a pensar y replantearme algunas cosas. Ya veremos dentro de seis meses a donde hemos llegado y en que dirección vamos.
iQ font
I stumbled upon this interesting marketing campaign by Toyota Belgium for the new car iQ. As explained in the video below, the font was created with the use of tracking technology and an overhead camera. I don’t know how effective this marketing campaign can be, but it sure is innovative.
The campaign was done by Pleaseletmedesign, Happiness Brussels and others… and the font can be downloaded at nl.toyota.be/iqfont
Top ten reasons…
to see the movie “Brüno”.
Judge for yourself…
Novedades no tan nuevas
Más vale tarde que nunca… y es por eso que aprovecho para poner un par de fotos un tanto retrasadas. Bueno, en realidad no tanto, pero el tiempo vuela y parece que hubiera sido hace años.
Empiezo por fotos de la boda de Mary y Marc, la cual fue tan divertida como emotiva. Tuvo de todo un poco… ‘bloopers’ en la iglesia, invitados tardíos (o de plano ausentes), apagón de luz en la iglesia (durante la sesión de fotos), excelente comida, mucho alcohol, bailarines profesionales, cuenta-chistes con zapatos dispares, etc. En fin, una boda muy completa jeje.
Además, debo decir que quedé con una impresión super positiva del fotógrafo, que aunque ya había visto fotos suyas de otras bodas antes, las fotos que he visto hasta ahora son increíbles. Aunque todavía no están todas listas, dejo un par de muestra de la sesión de fotos en la Feria de Chapultepec
Y bueno, de vuelta a la vida en Madrid no han habido novedades importantes. Me he escapado de las nevadas pero no del frío, aunque por lo menos ya empieza a mejorar la temperatura y los días son mucho más alegres.
Además de alguna que otra fiesta, también me fui un fin de semana a una casa rural con Álvaro y el resto de la familia brasileña-francesa-española-dominicana-bulgara. Muy divertido y la casa de lujo, aunque no sé si es exactamente lo que se conoce generalmente como una experiencia rural… con mesa de billar, televisiones planas, etc.
Y el último viaje fue otro fin de semana a Marruecos, un sitio que tenía muchísimas ganas de visitar y representa mi primer visita a un país musulmán. Definitivamente una experiencia que vale la pena, y más aún bien acompañado, como tuve yo la oportunidad de ir con toda la bola de nokieros y ex-nokieros. Aunque saque muchas fotos, pongo mis favoritas aquí.
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- Feria de Chapultepec 1
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- Feria de Chapultepec 2
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- Feria de Chapultepec 3
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- Marrakech 5
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- Marrakech 4
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- Marrakech 3
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- Marrakech 2
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- Marrakech 1
Ahora, los próximos viajes planeados son a Barcelona y Toulouse… aunque me muero de ganas por visitar Paris, Londres, Irlanda, Alemania, etc etc. En fin, ya veremos a donde nos lleva la vida. Saludos!
Weddings & more
Holidays have come and gone… so I guess it’s a good time for a small review.
This past Christmas I had the opportunity to go back home to Mexico for the Christmas season. It was great enjoying time with the family and friends. On top of that, I had my sisters wedding, which was great fun and lots of stressful moments, as any wedding should be. At the end, everything turned out well and we had a great time. I also had the chance to spend new years at Valle de Bravo with Marc’s family and, except for getting sick, it was great.
Overall it was nice going back to Mexico, but on the other hand it also felt strange… or rather than strange it felt dissappointing. I am impressed as how quickly things are getting worse in Mexico City. And it is not that there is too much traffic or whatever, what dissappoints me is that there is a complete lack of authority, causing that everybody does whatever they please. Some things that you would have never seen 5 years ago are now a daily, and the worse part is that no one seems to care. Talking about this with friends, I just got quick replies but no real answers. I guess people get accostumed to living in that situation but that obviously doesn’t change the fact that things are not as they should be. And I do realize it has a lot to do with the current government and that the rest of mexico is not like Mexico city, but it is still very dissappointing to see where it is all heading.
I now have the chance to live somewhere else and see it all from afar, but that doesn’t stop me from wishing the situation gets better. Let’s hope next time things start to change for the better.
Looking for the Christmas spirit
Another month another post…
Someway somehow it seems rather difficult to be regular at writing posts, but in line with Murphy’s law I always think of something to write when I have the least time available. Anyhow, let’s get on with another news update…
This past month has been good… without any major news, but as they say, no news good news. Winter has finally arrived, and its getting cold, dark and rainy in Madrid. Although I generally like winter, being home alone can make it a bit depressing, hence I am now only thinking about going to Mexico… which will be next saturday 20th. Related to that, even though we are close to Christmas I haven’t felt any christmas spirit at all… definitely don’t feel like going shopping (nothing to do with the , and all I’ve had (and will have all this week) are Christmas dinners… which is dangerous hehe. But hopefully all of that will change when I reach home
And well, lately work has been…. weird. Lots of work but no projects, which means a lot of commercial activity doing proposals and commercial presentations, but somehow there is a big lack of planning. Besides work, it has been good… we suffered from Imad’s visit almost a month ago, and we had a great time. Lots of party and lots of jayness… Afterwards a couple of parties have taken place, with the last one including a big bunch of brazilians, some gift exchanges and even a visit by the police to shut us up.
Ahh and in a less important note, the tv show “The IT Crowd” has started the third season… hilarious, I highly recommend it for a good laugh.
And now the countdown has begun… only 5 days left before leaving, and lots of things to do (of which some I want to and others not so much hehe). This trip back to Mexico marks another year that has gone by, and I am now in the first quarter of my third year in Madrid… which although very fun, starts to seem a bit scary. Let’s see how things evolve…
50 years of NASA
This is a long forgetten post that got lost in the drafts section. Although I don’t intend to say what I originally wanted to say, I do want to point out that this year was the 50th anniversary of the creation of NASA.
Over the course of these 50 years a lot of things have happened… from walking in the Moon to driving RC cars in Mars, the Hubble telescope and the International Space Station.
But the history of space exploration also reflects the history on earth, from a race to space to an era of cooperation with an International Space Station. And now NASA has competition not only from Russia and Europe, but also China and India are investing heavily on their space programs. Last week even Australia announced they are planning on launching a national space agency. All this focus on Space exploration shows the importance it has for real life on earth…
However, although NASA certainly has earned the right to celebrate (despite the several unfortunate accidents that are always innevitable), I can only think of the ageing fleet of Space Shuttles. Built during the 1980s, only 3 remain (Discovery, Atlantis & Endeavour) but are scheduled to be retired in 2010, which is not that far away. They are planned to be succeded by the Orion Spacecraft, but with the current financial crisis and shrinking budgets, lets hope NASA can celebrate with as much pride in 25 years.
Tales of the unexpected
As always, a while without writing… but now the lack of projects at work and hence more free time is allowing me to write some thoughts So yeah, lets look at the positive side of the bad news
Well, recently it has been a weird mix of good and bad things… first of all, I received the visit from Gautam Chandarana, an old friendo from Erasmus I met in Jönköping, Sweden. It had been a veery long time since we last saw each other, to be more precise about 5 years. But what impressed me is how after such a long time during which we hardly communicated, he is still the same fun guy and we still get along great. He arrived last thursday and came with his brother… in a small detour from his family visits to London (although from indian origin, he was actually born in Kenya and lives in Florida ).
With Gautam and Rishnan’s visit, the bad news started… first, while cleaning I accidentaly connected my old Xbox directly to the powerline, which caused an inmediate puff followed by a thik and stinky cloud of white smoke declaring the death of my old Xbox. I think my poor old xbox almost deserves a post of its own 
It has a very peculiar story but in brief, I bought it in Canada in 2002 while studying a summer course. It was the first generation, just released… I carried it in my back to Mexico where it enjoyed years of service Then I took it with me to Querétaro, then back to México, and last February I brought it with me to Spain. While performing a software update I half-crippled it, loosing the ability to play movies, and now this weekend I gave the final blow… which I guess is a good excuse to buy a new xbox or PS3
But my bad luck didn’t end there… later on during the same day, while watching the TV with Gautam and his brother, it suddenly went pitch dark. At first, we thought it had accidentaly powered off, but no… it suddenly started making screetching noises and showing lines and odd things at the top of the screen. And so, both my xbox and tv died the same day 
The TV is almost new (3 months) so it is still covered by the warranty, however it is a royal pain in the ass.
But we end with some more good news I had a great time with Gautam during the weekend… we started off with Diwali dinner on friday, went to Segovia on saturday and visited Madrid on sunday. They are leaving tomorrow tuesday, and my parents are coming over, arriving on thursday and staying for a week! And yes, I will post pictures soon!
So in summary, unexpected bad news but still good news and good times to come
Rise or fall of Russia?
Just as a quick note… there is a highly recommendable article on the Washington Post about the supposed rise Russia has been experiencing lately. With news about all these rich russians and the military displays it has been giving in Georgia, it would seem as if the situation in Russia is improving. However as the article explains, there are many troubling problems within Russia’s society.
Definitely worth a read…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/03/AR2008100301976.html
Summer’s over
Well, September has arrived and with it summer holidays are over. It has been quite a while since I reallly wrote a real post, my apologies for that, but as usual time flies by and its hard to find time to write about things that hide inside the every-day routine.
A lot of things have passed, so I guess I will try and start from where I left off… I have moved to my flat. Actually I have now been for more than a couple of months in the new flat and overall I am very happy about it. As always it has a million things I don’t like… such as hitting my head on the low ceiling, getting horribly hot, cracking floor, etc… but still the feeling of being my home and only mine is great! Yes I get to do all the cleaning, but at least I can keep it as clean as I want to, which results in the cleaning not being so bad after all.
And well, concerning my home, I recently bought a nice flat tv in order to watch movies and play videogames (I don’t really watch much tv). However, I had the great idea to update the software in my modded xbox (first gen) which resulted in a half-crippled box! :S I can still play original games but no longer “backup copies” of games nor watch dvd’s or other media. This is quite unfortunate, and is making me consider on buying a new generation console So still trying to decide between the PS3 and Xbox, and waiting to save some money
For the summer holidays, I went to Tenerife for a couple weeks with Alejandro, Virginia and Miguel. It was great to enjoy a lot of sun, sand and sea although surprisingly not everybody enjoys the beach! hehe It was a nice relaxing trip, and although it was a lot of fun, I have to admit it felt a bit weird going to Tenerife without my family… making me feel homesick more than usual.
After coming back from Tenerife, with a considerable delay due to Spanairs’ accident, I left the next day to Valencia with Alvaro, Jesús and Mauricio to the F1 GP of Europe! It was my first time at a F1 race and was very excited about it, plus it had the added bonus that it was the first time the race was held in Valencia, with a new street-circuit. And overall, I enjoyed the experience quite a lot. I have to say there were some things I liked a lot and some I didn’t like that much… The event is during three days (although we only went to two), which makes it bit intense… you have practices, qualifying rounds, GP2 races, porsche cup races, bmw cup races, etc. etc. and of course the F1 race. And for all of this you are sitting on a under-sized seat under the sun/rain next to a fat stinky guy Still, the sound of the engines is amazing… nothing I had ever imagined, and the atmosphere and excitement made it all worthwhile. Still, I have to admit you need to be quite a fan, but definitely something that needs to be experienced at least once in a lifetime
You can see some pictures from the summer holidays on the following public facebook album:
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=29510&l=1d47f&id=500254325
And well, now back to work and daily routine I started working last week, with the office half empty and not too much work to do. Now people are coming back from holidays and activity is gearing up again. So lets see what future project comes. We are already in September and the year is going by quicly… lets try and make something out of what’s next!
Cheers!
Houston: the eagle has landed!
Well this was a long and interesting weekend…
After over a year and a half of living in Madrid in the same flat, I finally moved to a new place to call home. The old place left me lots of good (and bad) memories and friends which I hope will last for life, but after a while it was time to finally move on to a place of my own. Thinking about it, this is the second place where I’ve lived the longest, just after my ‘real’ home, and although it was originally a temporary place to stay, it ended up feeling as my home. And as any home it also had a ‘family’… sort of… through that time I lived with 11 people who came and went (except for Diego who’s still there 2 belgians, 2 spaniards, 1 colombian, 1 peruvian, 1 norwegian, 2 italians, 1 portuguese and 1 french. And now, I move on to the unexpected! This gives me a great feeling of excitement but I guess also some responsibility hehe.
So last saturday I kinda started to pack… as always, it is amazing how much stuff you can accumulate in such a short time. Then I spent the whole evening at the obligatory stop: IKEA. I bought lots of things… from dishes to a chair. I am still thinking on buying a dining table, but we’ll see… space is kind of a problem. I went to IKEA with Alex and Virginia and as always I wanted to buy everything… and at the end it was a miracle I fitted in the car after all the stuff we bought! And well, to finish the day off we had Fabien’s birthday party! which was great. Relaxed but lots of fun… exactly what I needed.
Sunday was the main moving day. My paisano Alvaro was kind enought to offer me his help to move everything in his car to the new place. We had to do 2 trips, which I guess was not that bad. However, my bags were heavy as hell, and having to lift them up to the second floor without an elevator was a royal pain in the ass. Still it all went ok and I was off with an empty room behind and a flat full of suitcases and IKEA bags in front. Thankfully, in Spain you get a day off for moving, which was of great help cause I could spend all monday cleaning and arranging. Still, there are lots of things left to do, but it feels great to set up your own home, with everything as you like. I will post pictures of my flat, but later when its organized and tidy
Ahh and yes, I have a new phone line at home, so anyone who wants to call me you can do so to my home phone (cheaper than mobile!). My number is +34 915 331 345.
Cheers!
No matter what.
Following with my obsession with the movie “The Darjeeling Ltd.”, which I can’t get out of my mind for several reasons, and following my tocayo’s footsteps, below is a quote from the short film “Hotel Chevalier” which opens the movie. In an odd way so close and familiar, yet so strong.
Ex: Whatever happens in the end, I don’t wanna lose you as my friend.
Jack: I promise, I will never be your friend. No matter what. Ever.
Ex: If we fuck I’m gonna feel like shit tomorrow.
Jack: That’s okay with me.
Ex: I love you. I never hurt you on purpose.
Jack: I don’t care.
Semana Santa @ Torrevieja
Well, it is monday late night (although feels like sunday) and I should go to bed soon but I didn’t want to miss writing about the last week’s trip to Torrevieja and Alicante. So I guess this will be a short post
Accompanied by Alex, Virginia, Miguel and Divya, we followed Tomtom’s directions to Torrevieja. Miguel was kind enough to offer us his place to stay, which is a very nice flat located in the party centre of Torrevieja, just one block away from the sea. Overall the trip was really nice… very relaxed. We didn’t do much except for sleep, eat, drink, play and party, but it was a very welcome break from work routine. We spent endless hours playing parchis (Ludo according to Divya ) and the only bad thing was the weather, which was very chilly, cloudy and with some rain. Still, lots of fun and looking forward to repeat the trip!!
Hope you enjoy the pictures, cheers!
Time flies…
…and in a blink of the eyes, another month has passed. However a lot of stuff has happened, with several good news
First of all, I can now say I have a job! I have accepted an offer to work at Everis, an IT consulting company, and I will be working in the Management Consulting area which really thrills me a lot. So this has several implications… first of all, that I will be staying in Madrid a bit longer , which is very good although I definitely miss México. For this, the company is going to help me do all the necessary paperwork for the work visa and all. This is very good, but unfortunately Spanish bureaucracy is amazing… and it is gonna take a few couple months to get all done and ready so I can start working. The bad side of the change, is that obviously I will miss quite a few friends from Nokia, with whom I’ve only been working a few months but feels like such a long time.
In other news, last week I had a couple days off from work and decided to go to Rome. It had been a long time since I wanted to visit the city, so I thought it was the perfect time to go. Also, this was my first trip completely on my own after a long long time, and although worried at the beginning, I had an absolutely great time. The city is amazing, with lots of things to see in every corner… from ancient Roman ruins to impressive monuments. The city has a bit for every kind of taste, and it is almost impossible not to like it, in spite of its dirtiness and crazy lifestyle.
I spent three full days walking around everywhere… it is really a small city, although by the end of each day I was dying. Of the places I highly recommend are Fontana di Trevi, Piazza Navona, Pantheon, Castel Sant’ Angelo, Trastevere and of course Vatican City. The great surprise was Fontana di Trevi, of which I had seen pictures but it is much more amazing in real life. A letdown was Colosseo, which is nice and in a way amazing, but I imagined it much bigger, and there is not much left anyways Vatican City was impressive… it is a lot bigger than it seems… and I loved it. It almost makes you convert to catholicism! St. 
Peters Basilica is huge, beautiful and elegant… it reminds you of the amount of power the church once had. I went up to the top of the dome, and I also visited the tombs of the popes, including John Paul II… and it is breathtaking. I also went to the Vatican Museum, which I liked a lot, although it sometimes feels just like a art depot since it has rooms stuffed with figures that it seems they couldn’t find any place else where to put them. Still, very nice and highly recommendable… tops was the Maps room, simply amazing.
And well, I obviously ate lots of pizzas and lots of Gelatto chocolate fondante! jeje I went to a pizza place recommended to me by my boss called Pizza da Baffeto and it was absolutely amazing… typical Italian place, very small with every waiter shouting at each other and the pizza was fabulous. And I also took too many pictures… so for those interested you can check out the best ones in my Flickr account. So overall I had a great time, and I definitely feel I need to go back to Italy to visit so many other places… which I will hopefully do sometime soon!
Running to stand still
Well, today sunday I participated in the race organized by BBVA bank. It was a 5 km race for beginners (obviously) and I went with the only purpose to exercise and have some fun… and it was! Although the idea of waking up Sunday at 7:30am is not very appealing, it was really nice to see the streets of Madrid empty.
The race was good also… with a lot of people: 5,400 people registered for Madrid. It started from Paseo de la Castellana and I finished the 3km in about 30 minutes (the official times are not yet posted). Also, testing Nokia’s technology I tracked the race using the application Sports Tracker and a GPS device. I have to say I really like the application, and professional runners should find it really useful. However, there is still the inconvenience of having to carry the phone and GPS receiver, or a bulky phone with integrated GPS. So below you can see the route of the race, with low, high’s and fast points, as well as a graph and the summary. And yes I know… there is a lot of noise specially on speed measurement… unfortunately GPS is not extremely accurate at low speeds (needs more precision) and even less in the city.
Eurobasket and more…
Well, a few weeks ago there was a contest at work in which the person that made the best pictures (with a Nokia phone obviously ) would win tickets for the Eurobasket tournament here in Madrid. And yes, you guessed right, I did win tickets for 2 quarter-final games! My pictures were not that great, but considering not many people participated hehe, I won 7th place! With this, I won two tickets for the two games on thursday: Russia-France, Spain-Germany.
The first game, Russia-France, was not that good… but the two teams were very close to each other and the match was decided on the last few seconds, which made it quite interesting. Finally Russia won and is today playing the final The second game, obviously Spain won… It was a great game, and at one point Spain had a lead of almost 40 points! Great plays and a great atmosphere!
(You can see the pictures in orginal size at my Flickr page: http://flickr.com/photos/jlecanda/ )
In other news… work at Nokia is going ok. This was a tough week with a lot of work, and as always some tasks are better than others but overall it is going good. Now, I am also taking charge of organizing Nokia’s participation at the Movilforum event of Telefonica. It is something completely new for me (which doesn’t drive me crazy), but I think I will learn a lot from it.
And finally, as you should know, today is Mexican Independence day!! Unfortunately I didn’t had the chance to celebrate it properly (although I did had a lot of fun), but instead I got (a bit) drunk with caipirihnas and surrounded by Spanish people saying stupid comments about Mexico… así que ¡Viva México Cabrones!
Holidays and other news…
With the summer, Spain stops… literally! and Madrid suffers an amazing transformation from a lively city into a deserted one, taken by empty streets, closed shops and sunny evenings. Thankfully, I also had a break from work and got some proper vacations
First of all, an important news is the new acquisition I made hehe. I bought myself my first reflex camera, a Nikon D40. It is an entry level camera but for my inexpertise it is more than enough, and it came in very good time to take pictures during the holidays, which you can check at my Flickr account.
So, having a break from Nokia, I had a week and a half of holidays starting in San Sebastián. I went with Alex and we stayed in San Sebastian as a base, travelling to nearby places from there. Overall I liked it a lot. I had only heard positive comments about the Vasque Country and they are all true. Great food, nice beaches, nice girls and overall a very nice city.
We visited cities along the coast nearby, both on the Spanish side as well as on the French side, and although all the beaches were more than full of tourists, I liked a lot more than one. On the French part we went to St. Jean de Luz, Biarritz and Bayonne, and on the Spanish side to Hondarribia (specially nice), Gentaria and Zumaia. On the way back, we stopped at Guernica and Bilbao. Guernica was a big disappointment, but Bilbao is very nice.
But we didn’t go back to Madrid… instead, we went to a rural house for the weekend with some friends of Virginia. The house was in the middle of nowhere, and we had a good time… definitely very relaxing, with great food and lots of fun. We spent the weekend with Virginia, Isabel, Elena (from Barcelona) and Javier.
We returned to Madrid Sunday afternoon, and after a few hours, I left to the airport with Divya to start the next trip to Barcelona. Although a bit tired from not sleeping at all, we had a great time, doing the typical tour around the city. Although I had been to Barcelona before, I enjoyed a lot the trip… lots of fun teasing Divya and enjoying the beach Barceloneta. I got a good tan from the whole week walking in the sun, and a big sun burn from lying in the beach
And finally, the holidays are over and now back to Madrid and to work. Although holidays are never long enough, I really needed a break after the master, and this was a very welcomed one. Now back to empty Madrid in an empty flat! Looking forward for work, parties and job hunting!
Nokia, Björk and other farewells…
Well, firstly my apologies for late updates but the last week was a bit chaotic…
To start, my first impressions working at Nokia… Well I started working on Monday so over a week now, and overall it has been very good. As expected, in the beginning it has been a lot of reading and getting up to date, and doing administrative stuff like getting a place, a computer, an email account, etc.
The first thing that shocked me was the office atmosphere… it is extremely relaxed, with a couple of couches and a coffee-kitchen area, bright colors, low cubicles and open spaces. It is the exact opposite of my previous job at QTC, which had blue-grayish colors and high cubicles. However, people seem to work more here and waste less time! I guess it is mainly because of the age difference, which obviously is higher here at Nokia. Still it is very friendly and supportive.
The second thing that shocked me were the noises, particularly phone bells. Instead of having the typical office where everybody has a desk phone and you hear the typical phone ring from once in a while, at Nokia (as expected) everybody has only a mobile phone. Therefore, you hear all the time the same SMS sound and the latest song as a ring tone At the beginning I thought it was a bit annoying, but now I am getting used to it and I even think it is better since you can easily recognize who’s phone is ringing.
So overall, it looks pretty well… but hopefully with time I will get more integrated and the job will become more interesting.
Well, next… on Tuesday we had the master farewell party at the well-known Cielo de Pachá with the usual free open bar The party was done together with the MFM, MMM and spanish MBA programs, although still few people attended. It was a lot of fun, although obviously my plans to leave early (I had to work on Wednesday!) didn’t work out quite as planned and I ended up getting home after 3am. Obviously I slept-over and woke up at 8:30am! So yeah, I was a bit late to my third day of work :S
To continue with an active week, on Wednesday I went to the Björk concert here close to my home at Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas. It was full of ‘alternative’ people and started very late, but when it finally did it was totally worth it. It was a great concert… what at the beginning seemed to be a simple concert ended up being a high-tech rave full of lasers! High-tech electronic multi-touch screens were used to produce sounds. It started with the song “Earth Intruders” from the latest album which also has a great video that is posted below. The second video is from the Coachella festival (the best version I could find) and it was simply awesome!
Finally Friday and Saturday where party time, so Sunday I was tired and sick. I am still sick but hopefully I’ll get better soon.So I guess that is enough for now… thanks for the ones who are brave enough to read it all
cheers!
Master Leco
Well, it has been a while now since I haven’t written any updates in the blog… sorry about that. But not to worry, the time has come for an update!
The reason for a lack of updates has been the final days of the master, which imply exams, final projects and final presentations. Overall, this period had a lot of smaller courses which implied that at the end we had a lot of final projects to do As always, some courses were very good, others were ok and a couple that I would’ve preferred to skip, but overall a very enriching end to the master.
We ended classes last week with a full day of leadership, with the long awaited feedback session. It was a very interesting and useful session, at least for some of us, and definitely an unforgettable one. After the last class, we obviously had to celebrate, so we went for some drinks to Bò Finn. We drank, we chatted, we played pool, we poured drinks on each others heads, and we got kicked out of the bar. But thanks to Alvaro’s negotiating skills we managed to stay for a bit longer Now that I think about it, it had been a very long time since I was kicked out of a bar!
This week we had the final case presentation, which was based on a very recent Harvard case of Brightcove, a video publishing and distribution company. We had to deliver the written document (which I’m sure nobody read ) on Monday and we had the presentation yesterday Wednesday at closed doors with three judges. Although with some questions, the presentation appeared to be more a sort of a procedure that had to be followed. So anyways, I did the presentation with Alex and we were the last ones to present. And then… party! Well, actually we went for food and drinks, and then for a typical Spanish siesta since we were all so tired. At night, fiesta again, starting with a nice exotic dinner thanks to Yan (who by the way was in the shower when I arrived… one hour late!). After the great dinner, we went to the bar of the week, at Fortuny. Not my favorite place, but we had a good time.
And now, well enough talking about parties… regarding my job search, I went this week to Everis to present the application exams. Overall I think I did good but keep your fingers crossed so they will call me However, I am still looking for a job in other places. And yes, as some of you already know, I got an internship at Nokia! 
On Tuesday I got a call from them to start the internship as soon as possible… meaning today! Fortunately, I managed to change it for next Monday to at least have some rest. So yeah, next week when I start I will give you an update on how it goes… but I am already excited!
And well, to stop boring you, I have pasted below a couple of videos that were done by classmates for the final project of Digital Media Management. They are supposed to be to advertise the master… I don’t know how successful they are but at least you get to see with whom I’ve spent almost a year now!
Photosynth
I guess it has already been commented somewhere, at least I saw it at laJunglaDigital (although I had seen it before ), but still I think it is an amazing technology.
This time, it comes from Microsoft (or a company it bought recently ) and it is a technology to create 3D environments from a series of digital photographs called Photosynth. For this, it takes regular pictures from any source (cell phones to SLR cameras) and detects the relations between them. With this, it creates the environment which you can navigate being enriched by pictures. So that you can understand it a bit better, below is a video with a demo:
You can do a live demo of the technology at the Photosynth website. It is really amazing, and just imagine the possibilities this opens to!
WWDC’07
Well, as many of you may already know, last Monday was Apple‘s yearly Worldwide Developers Conference. As it has been widely discussed, it generally didn’t show new “top-secret”, eye-dropping new features of the future release of Mac’s OSX. However, there are three points that I believe have not been widely discussed that I feel are of great importance.
The first, is the announcement by EA Games (which we visited during the residential period at Silicon Valley ) and id Software of future game releases for the Mac platform. This is definitely good news, considering that gaming is one of the weakest points of the Mac. But what is very important are the underlying reasons, and its that the Mac is gaining popularity, period. It is starting to become an attractive market for programmers, in which they will find a big enough market that makes Mac programming profitable. So maybe this means that a critical mass of mac users has been reached, with which more and more programmers will begin to shift towards the Mac. This will in turn make Macs more attractive, with a wider offer of applications. How will this change the monopoly of Windows in the future? I guess we will have to wait and see.
Another announcement that took place was the release of the Safari browser for Windows. Although at first sight it looks as a move to increase the market share of Apple’s browser, I believe there are more underlying reasons. First of all, Safari’s future increase in popularity is questionable… starting because most of the Mac users (including me) use Firefox primarily. I think Safari is a great browser but is missing an important feature, which are plugins. Without plugins, it is impossible to expand the browser’s features as you can now do with Firefox. Therefore, as much as I like Safari for some things, I will keep using Firefox. Therefore, this move is very questionable as a try to hook new Windows users and convert them into switchers. Specially now that just after a few hours of release several security holes have been found in Safari.
But in fact, Safari was released for Windows for another purpose: the creation and testing of applications for the iPhone. Which brings us to the other big important announcement: the iPhone will only support Web 2.0 applications, which in other words is no applications. Or is it? I think this marks clearly the shift from typical system based applications to web based applications. And there are several advantages. First, as Apple’s main concern, it is a lot easier to maintain a level of security and system stability. And second, there are no needs for installation, maintenance, updating, etc. Everything is maintained remotely and updated instantly for every user. This I believe is the future, if not for all uses, but at least for a lot. This however, also limits in a way the possibilities for such applications. An important example we have already studied at the MMTDB is Salesforce, which manages to remove the cost of system maintenance from its users and gains by economies of scale.
This is another move towards the previous model of shared computing power through “dumb” terminals. Let’s see how fast and how far we will go in this direction…
Silicon Valley
Well, as I have already posted, as part of the masters program we had recently a residential period at Silicon Valley. I have already posted about the trip in general but I wanted to write more about the visits. However, I haven’t had much free time recently, but luckily our academic director Ricardo Pérez has written very good reviews on the school’s Digital Convergence blog. So yes, they are a bit long, but if you are interested they are definitely worth reading.
Day 2 – Accenture & Sun Microsystems
cheers!