Violent breaking news

I am not being very active with the blog lately, I think this site at the end is going to be a kind of "weekend turistic report site" during its last month of life (which, on the other hand it doesn´t sound bad to me). Anyway, since the blog has reached what we can call a very modest steady number of loyal readers, I will try to continue explaining something also during the week, even if my creativity is not in a very good shape lately (exactly the same as me. I need to do some sport or I will get mad). I guess time has the biggest influence in the posting rithm, since during my most "bored moments" this summer I felt that I had lots of things to write, but now I am well occupied. Anyway, as you know there is not much to tell during weeks here. Today I have done the presentation of my first internship project, in front of some "big fish", and at the end everybody started to laugh at me....No no no, this was the nightmare I had yesterday ;) The presentation went pretty good, or at least this is what I think. At least I heared a couple of "good job" at the end, which I guess is not a bad signal. Appart from that, I am reading a couple of MBA-related books (not very interesting to talk about that here), still watching series in DVD (Now its the turn for Lost), reading other things that we can´t call "a book", and not going out much, although today is thursday and we have the "bar of the week" waiting, and a pre-BOW dinner to which I am already late and I am pretty sure I won´t make it (The washing machinne is still doing its job. No surprises today with the neighbors). No problem, i have some good stuff we bought in Milan, including a delicious 500gr absolutely fresh mozzarella that will experience its last minutes of existence in a few minutes.

Before leaving work today I was logging out from my email account and then I saw a couple of yahoo news that are worth mentioning and will be the "theme" of this post. Nothing serious, this site was not created to talk about anything serious. I thought for a moment that someone in yahoo was having real fun today, or maybe went drunk at work, but I guess we should trust the most popular internet site info sources.

First: During a flight in Canada, apparently the Pilot had to satisfy some physical necessities that all of us have. Yes, I am sorry, if you thought that Pilots don´t do that, you were wrong (I mean going to the bathroom to do the normal physiological stuff, do not think with the perverse side of your mind. Although Pilots also go to the bathroom for other reasons I guess) Well, the question is that after some time, the Pilot wasn´t back, and 30 minutes before landing he was closed in the bathroom! Can you imagine the passengers struggling to open the door so that someone could land the plane? Automatic pilots can´t land planes I think, and who trusts in Co-Pilots?. At the end the story ended fine, but maybe the Pilot will think twice in the next flight.

Second flashing news: This one comes from yahoo Italy. A man died yesterday, drowned in the water in a town called Libreville (in Gabon if I remember well). Well, this one is sad, but there is some black humor in here. I apologize if someone thinks I shouldn´t post this one. The fact is that the man had a revelation, a religious revelation, and he decided to imitate Jesus in the famous biblic passage when he walks on the water. Yes, he decided to imitate Jesus by crossing a 20 minute boat water distance, and, well, I guess he didn´t manage to imitate Jesus properly (La intencion es lo que cuenta). Revelations are not always good as you see, but at least he died thinking he was Jesus in front of photographers and other curious people. What I don´t understand is why all those people let him imitate Jesus. At least he could have choosed to imitate Jesus in a small pond and not in such a huge lake, or someone should have told him that they would be "close to him-jesus" just in case. Amen

Third flashing news from yahoo: A chinese woman (Ms Li), had a car accident involving other vehicles. This sounds like a serious one again right? If you ever see Ms Li....anyway. Ms Li has a dog (still alive I think), which she claims as a very intelligent one. And what do you do when you have a very intellingent dog that looks at you every day very attentively while you are driving? Yes, you are right, you think that the dog is just trying to learn how to drive, and because the animal is very intelligent, (if you are the kind of person Ms Li is) one day you decide to give the dog the control of the direction of the vehicle. Only the direction, you still control the accelerator and brakes, so there should be no danger. After a few seconds, when you have a big accident, you tell the Police that you decided to give the animal "a try" and see how the dog had learned to drive. Ms Li, I am sorry but I have to say that maybe your dog is very intelligent, but you are REALLY stupid. Perro al volante, peligro constante (this is the title of the article). Amazing.
Here is Ms Li's fabulous driver: And no more news. Well, wait a sec, I will announce one. This weekend will be my last smoking weekend. I am ready to do this, or at least try to give up seriously. However, I still have a big solidarity with smokers. For example, as we are talking about news, there was another one some time ago, that talked about how smoking will be erased from some chapters of Tom&Jerry, after a viewer complained they were not suitable for children. Apparently cartoon editors are painstakingly working through more than 1,500 episodes of the cartoons painting out images of characters smoking frame by frame. This is nonsense, well that is my opinion. Then the inocent children that looked how Tom (or Jerry, I have never known who was the smoker and who was the other one) was trying to impress a beutiful kitty by rolling a cigarrete with one hand (here we assume that the cat, Tom, or Jerry, is the smoker), will just rent some video or videogame where they can kill people, destroy houses or watch some other "dangerous" stuff easily in the TV, but everything without smoke, very healthy. I am thinking about the cartoons that appear in the Simpsons, and I don´t think Bart and Lisa are growing badly because of that. I watched Tom and Jerry smoking, thousands of violent stuff when i was a child, and I think I am an absolutely normal person that respects everything and everyone, so maybe the problem is not just in the cartoons. Well, I smoke. mmmm This is all because of Hanna Barbera. I think I will sue Hanna barbera.
This is becoming a long post already (I am 100 % sure that I won´t make it to the dinner, especially because now I am waiting for the dryer to finish its drying job). Just two more things. I should have posted this one before, so anyone near Valencia could have gone there. Anyway, I think it was yesterday that hundreds of trucks full of tomatoes unloaded their content in a town called Buñol, near Valencia, so that people from there and thousands of "ready to fight" visitors could start the annual "tomatoe war". La tomatina, more than 100 thousand kilos of tomatoes flying around during the day. Incredible. So if you are around there in one year from now (and you have some clothes you are willing to lose forever), do not think twice. Red, and harmless, violence!!!
And to finish this. I haven´t been able to see any basketball game from the world championship, but I am confident in the basket guys (this is another story than in futbol). So maybe tomorrow we win the Argentinians and with A LOT of luck we can do something against the only country that knows really how to play this game. Lets see...Music for today: Queen - we will rock you

********* Update*********
I am already eating my own words about the basket part in this post. ñam ñam ñam. Anyway, it is a shame that Cobe and his friends A.Iverson and the others "I love this game" are never in this championships. Well, just that now we just need a bit less of luck to be........champ....piñon!!

Vacanze a Milano 2006 (part1)

The first that is worth to mention about this weekend starts on Friday afternoon, when I was going to do my clothes washing before going to the first IESE students and alumni barbacue in Basel ever. I went down to the basement with all the clothes, and when I was putting everything inside the washing-machine I realized that I also needed to wash the jeans I was wearing. I reconsidered going up again, change jeans, and come back (also because I was not wearing any t-shirt in the top), but instead of that I thought that since I never see anyone in the stairs maybe I could take the risk of not going up and stay in underwear and black socks for some seconds in my way up. That was really a bad choice. You should have seen the face of one woman of around 55 years old when we crossed each other in the stairs (Thank god I decided not to take the elevator). The funniest thing was that we both decided to act very normally and I think it was better not to try to give an excuse of my exhibitionism in German. The rest of the night went pretty good in the barbacue at Roland's house.

After a busy week, and taking advantage from the fact that Ignacio drived around 10 hours with his car to come to Basel in July, Paco, Ignacio and me decided to go to Milan for the weekend. This, contrary to the washing machine decision, was a very good choice. (Eugenio siento no hayas podido venir, la próxima será). Exceptionally, the weather was good on Saturday 10AM, and we had a good trip to Milan, with good conversations and good sightseeing of the swiss campaign and some nice lakes. The only problem was a "medium-size" traffic jam, that was fastly cleared by a swiss-highway-worker-android with casc included. Cheap labor. (well, maybe that humanoid figure caused thge traffic jam by itself).

We are now in Milan. Its sunnnny and the temperature is something close to summer time, but there is no one in the streets. Desertic Milan. Leave everything in the hotel and go straight to the Duomo (there was a lot more people there). Piazza Duomo. Awesome. Definetely I love Italy. We decide to take a picture with the Galleria V.Emanuelle in the back for the posterity, so I ask the first Italian teenager that I see to take us a picture. At the same time I think for myself that the Italian stereotype of "cutre"-fashion and awful sunglasses its confirmed once more (No ofenses ;)

Picture 1: We are good-looking don´t you think? Ei, wait wait, what the hell! The purpose of the picture is obviously not US, but the PLACE where we are! But maybe that is too difficult to understand for the teenager, so we decide to ask again to an older man that looks as having better criterion for pictures.
Picture 2
Well, seems that with age we are going abit better, but I start to think that maybe some people like more the ground of the square than the V.Emanuelle gallery. This is actually a possibility, especially because we then ask to a third person, this time a woman (maybe it is a matter of sex). No, its not a matter of sex. Its a matter of....I don´t know! Come on, I am only asking to put a nice building and 3 people inside the same scren!

At that time we already asked 4 people and it seemed that it was not going to be possible to have a normal picture of the place, so we had to split and take pictures in pairs instead of in trios. Paco takes the camera and manages to put both the building and the people in the same space. Bravo!

Inside the Gallery we took another picture, this time with the MacDonalds in the back. In this environment, it sems that rat-hamburgers should be better than any other food when you see a glamorous "M" surrounded by Prada and Luis Vuitton. Of course, we didn´t check that. When we go out from the gallery we decide to go to the castle, but Igancio has to make a phone call to his girlfriend to check some places to party at night in Milan. At the same time, in a few seconds, he is surrounded by a group of
Japanese (Atsh, I am sorry but this time I am pretty sure they were japanese ;) that start taking pics and looking at the Duomo around him. The situation starts to get funny, and Paco decides to stand in front of the group for a picture. Ignacio continues without noticing any of the touristic environment around him.

The Duomo of Milan is Impressive.

After visiting the castle we had the view below in front of us, and we decided that the best way to prepare for the "Aperitivi" and get ready for the night was maybe to have some rest in that grass that was literally "waiting for me" to sit down and have a short siesta.

Piazza Sempione in the back.

Vacanze a Milano 2006 (part 2)

This is the situation we left post 1. Its already 7PM, and we go for these aperitivi and drinks for which we have drived to Milan.

After we have some beers and pasta in Via Brera (I think), we decide to look for an apparently good place to have another drink. A trendy hotel that Ignacio's girlfriend has recommended. In our way there we walk in front of "LaScala" again and we start surrounding the V.Emanuelle gallery in search of the objective. Bad luck. Or we are lost or we are less skilled to find a place with the help of a map than the teenager in post 1 was with the camera. We ask policemen, waiters, hotel receptionists, normal citizens and not so normal......Nothing. Ok maybe we should better give up and go to the hotel to have some sleep and get ready for the night. No way. I swear we find this XXXXX hotel. And at the end....We found it! the only problem is that it was closed for holidays. Nice, very nice!

After sleeping a bit we went to a delicious restaurant and then to have some drinks. I will never complain again about the quantity of gin in the gin-Tonics served in England or Switzerland while saying how in Spain you can heve a decent gin-tonic. No, from now on I will complain by giving the example of how in Milan you can drink a proper and maybe too proper gin-tonic, especially if you go to a bar in Corso Como the name of it I don´t remember (About the bar I only remember the gin-tonic and the waitress)

Sunday: Wake up, breakfast, and drive to Lugano. Sunny day again. (wow I can´t believe this). Lugano looks a good place to eat in a terrace while enjoying the view and looking at the Porsches and some Ferraris you can see there every minute.

In Lugano we have had a very long lunch, due to the fact that apparently there was a fight between some members of the family-owners in the kitchen (At least this is what a waiter who looked some kind of man who tames Lions in a circus or whatever you call this profession in english told us). We are more of the opinion that the "family argue" affected the memory of the past waiter and we have been absolutely forgotten, ah! and now we can only order spagghetti. No problem, we are in Lugano, enjoying the view and the sunday. One more beer please.

And after Lugano it was time to come back to Basel. Once we cross a couple of tunnels, we enter again in the microclima of the Basel canton, and the fabulous August rain and clouds are here again. I was already missing them after one day and a half. Paco has invented a sentence that he now uses everytime: "Nada mas falso que un verano en suiza"

Well, at least I can take some curious pics from the car.

Music for the trip to Milan: Nina Simone - Sinnerman