Queen Mary 2 in stop-motion
Its been a almost two years since I enjoyed a trip onboard Cunard‘s Queen Mary 2 through the norwegian fjords, but I stumbled upon this video which was a nice reminder. Although not much of the cruiser is visible, it is an interesting take.
Cheers,
Belarus in motion time-lapse video
Very nice video of Belarus (Minsk) using motion time-lapse.
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
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!
Rainy outside?
Is it rainy outside?? Not for me! I can see a beautiful skyline under a shiny blue sky! All thanks to my umbrella which I bought in Frankfurt
Algarve, Portugal
Summer is about to arrive, and it couldn’t be a better time for some days off from work! So last weekend with thursday and friday off, we took off to Algarve, in Portugal!
The whole thing was sort of a last-minute plan… I was told by Alvaro of the plan to go, and friends invited friends and so on, and at the end, it was a huge group of 24 people, and it turned out to be a great trip!
We parted from Madrid on Wednesday afternoon… 3 cars left earlier and our plan was to leave at 6 but obviously some how everyone got delayed and we ended up leaving at 8pm. With 8-9 hours driving ahead it seemed like it was gonna be tough but thanks to the in-car company it turned out to be fun (although still tiring). In our car the official driver was Alvaro and co-pilot Mónica, and we reached the hotel at about 4:30am (I can’t remember if that was local time or Madrid-time).
From then on, the long weekend was sleeping, eating, playing footbal, partying and basically enjoying the beach! Half of the fellow travellers were brazilians, which meant playing football, dancing samba, drinking caipirinhas and basically party all day long! It is amazing how they really do live at a very different pace!
The beaches were very nice… the weather was quite good, although a bit cold, but we still managed to swim in the sea and all. So overall the trip was excellent (except for monkey’s cousin of course) and to top it off Real Madrid won the league when we reached Madrid! Unfortunately I couldn’t make it to cibeles but next year I will
Below are some pictures… hope you like them. Cheers!
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!
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!
San Francisco & Silicon Valley!
As some of you already know, as part of the master we had a very nice trip to Silicon Valley! It truly was a great experience, and by the pictures, this post will be a bit long… but, I hadn’t written in a long time
After a long night and some surprises at the Madrid airport when it turned out that Alex & Jesus had invalid passports, we arrived to San Francisco! The picture is from inside the airport, just after passing customs… and yes, policeman started to shout at us and kick us out! :S
Although all the visits were in Silicon Valley, we stayed at a hotel in San Francisco, just next to China Town… and yes, Yan felt right at home! The hotel was good and next to the city center, and obviously the visit to the Apple store was a must!
On Sunday, we had the ‘official’ tour… we went more or less around all the city. The first stop was the de Young Fine Arts museum, which I liked, but I guess it doesn’t look that good after being compared with the museums of Europe. Still, architecturally is really nice. After lunch, we went to the Golden Gate bridge, to Pier 39, and later the official welcome dinner! It was good and definitely a fun day.
Who is the academic director and who is the student?
So on Monday the real business began The first visit was Cisco. We stayed there the whole day and was generally very good. We had several conferences, some demos of really nice future products and a tour. They showed us their mobile offices, where nobody has an assigned seat, but is a ‘serve as you come’ office. In general very good for people that travel so much. And to finish the day, we went shopping! Coming to the US, this is a must so we went to an outlet.
The second day, after some conferences at the hotel by Accenture (which were really good), we went to Sun Microsystems. Although the conference was not as good as we hoped, the demos of the technologies they are developing were outstanding. From the Sun mobile desktop technology to Java real-time… definitely awesome! An example of a company that does great value creation but lacks to capture it.
On Wednesday, we went to Google… possibly the most expected visit And yes, it is a one-of-a-kind company. Actually, it doesn’t look like a company, but more like a college. To Start, they have colorful lava lamps on every building reception… plus obviously colorful sofas. And everything looks friendly, full of employee’s art in every wall, free food everywhere, resting areas, cafeterias, pool tables, games, massage chairs, gym, laundry, swimming pools, beach volleyball, etc. The environment is so relaxed that is even weird… people can take their dogs to work or take a nap if they feel tired. Definitely a good place to work, but obviously all those commodities are focused in enabling you to stay at the ‘office’ 24×7.
After Google, we went to Hewlett-Packard. Very nice installations, but the complete opposite from Google. While in Google all the food is for free, at HP they have coin machines for aspirin! But generally the conference was very good and they also gave us a demo of their newest products… with HP Halo the most impressive (although I liked more the Cisco ).
The visits on Thursday were Electronic Arts and IDEO. EA was good, we had a tour around the buildings and we visited the team in charge of The Sims 3. We saw everything, even the sound recording studio… which was really nice. It is impressive how they really live the game, with all the offices decorated with the theme. Ahhh and yes of course, they have an Xbox, PS3 and Wii in every building reception
Ahh yes, after everybody complained with Rajesh for asking so many questions when time is so limited, he of course got quite angry. And he got even angrier when I took this picture, but it was worth it Finally, to finish the week we had an innovation workshop at IDEO. It was generally quite good and lots of fun, although I didn’t like some details…
Obviously we also had some fun during the night Although after being in Madrid… it definitely feels like something is missing. On Wednesday we went to Hooters, to eat some ‘typical’ chicken wings served by not-so-hot waitresses. On Thursday we also went out, but no with no excuses Ricardo (the academic director) and Eunice (the executive academic director) joined us. Ahhh and yes, Ricardo had to show an ID to get in… he is still a child, on the inside at least A fun night with a crazy back-riding accident of Rajesh and heart-hopping by Anirudh.
And well, everything has an end sadly… This was a long post, but perhaps if I can I will upload later other pictures or comment on some things I found interesting. We’ll see, depends on my workload 
which lately has been crazy.
See ya!
Belgique!
Well this past week we had a couple of holidays and IE was kind enough to give us a full “puente” of five days!! And thankfully I had the chance to visit a new country: Belgium! Well, actually they were two, Belgium and the Netherlands. I stayed in Wavre with Marc, who was kind enough to stand me for a few days, and traveled around. The first day, we went to Brussels!
Marc with his very nice car at Waterloo
The next visit was Amsterdam! We were very lucky and we went on “Queens’ day!” which meant that the whole city was partying! It was awesome, I really liked it but I guess I will have to go back someday to get to know the real every-day Amsterdam.
And the last stop was Brugges! I loved Brugges, really nice and definitely worth visiting. Nice sights, romantic canals, beautiful architecture and great atmosphere! (although too many tourists)
And as some of you already know… after some digestive problems and a lack of taxis, I almost missed my flight! I am really thankful for those people that do the small details that mean so much.
For those of you brave enough, you can find all the pictures I took during the trip in the gallery… I hope you enjoy!
Toledo!
It has been a while since I wanted to go to Toledo, but I had been waiting for a weekend without too much work and good weather. Finally, that was last weekend! So generally I liked Toledo a lot! We had lots of fun, the weather was great, oh and yes of course, we had to walk and walk and walk and…
Yan & Divya with Sancho Panza!
Portugal!!
So after two weeks of hard work with lots of exams and final projects, I got a chance to travel to Portugal during the Easter holidays!
Traveling by car with Alex and Miguel, we toured around Sintra, Lisbon, Coimbra, Porto and finally an express visit to Salamanca.
In the car aided by GPS (not to get lost ) and with Miguel as co-pilot.
Entering Lisbon, on the “25 de Abril” bridge. Very nice views…
City of Sintra
Palace da Pena
Street of Sintra
Click below to see the rest of the pictures…