Cucuhouse blog

Presenting...cuchaus cinema

2008-06-01T19:31:00.003+02:00

Because watching any movie in tv with advertising every 15 min more than sucks, because David was going to buy a projector and there were some wood rectangles at home, because we have a big enough living room, and because now we can enjoy Tony Soprano's face as big as it should be.
Home cinema....

Fast update and comming back to the roots

2008-05-19T20:38:00.028+02:00

Time seems to fly lately. Trips, work, small holidays, MBAreunion, and well, the new cinema screen that we have installed at cucuhaus (that, however, for the next post). For this reasons, and because my writing creativity has become a nulity for some time now, this long blog update will focus only in the facts during this last month, starting in the air, on my way to Zurich to visit Marek.

It was nice to be in Switzerland again, especially in Zurich. As always when I visit switzerland, weather was beautiful. I am starting to think that the bad weather there is a myth. However, I said that also in Amsterdam, and the day after (Lena put that sentence right) I was "facing reality" riding my bicicle under the heavy rain. Anyway, lots of sun in Zurich.

Afternoon barbecue with Zurich crowd close to the lake. Here Gloria, my temporary Italian cousin enjoying some sun.

Great afternoon that starts to become crazy night when we have a conversation about Eurovision in Till's terrace. I am trying to explain everybody the rationale behind Spain sending such a freak to the contest thsi year. If you are not European, probably you do not know what the hell is Eurovision. Believe me, it is no great deal if you continue to live without knowing about it. However, to us europeans Eurovision brings child memories, and we are so proud of participating in this music contest that every year we send the best of the best of each nationality there, to show everybody things like.....THIS.

Surprisingly, our Italian representative in Zurich, Gloria, says she does not know what Eurovision is. (it may not sound so strange, but if you are, lets say a Spanish with less than 100 years old, you know what is Eurovision of course). After sending sms to half of her phone list in desperate help, she got the answer. Apparently, Italy organized the event once, and they lost a lot of money with the organization, so the contest has not been very popular in the country at all after that. buh??! I have not x-checked this information though. Any research on the issue is welcome.

Here below Marek and Catherine after watching the 2008 Eurovision Spain representative singing the chiki chiki song.

After that we decided to go to Hive club for a bit of crazy party.

Water and sun. Perfect combination for a sunday after Hive. Thanks Marek and Gloria for a great weekend!

Another week. IESE reunion. MBa folks get together in Barcelona. Same people, same place, one year older...

On saturday we could enjoy a class from Pedro Videla, and a visit to the Ramon Roqueta winery, close to Manresa, where I completed my masters in wine this year after the trips to LaRioja and Valladolid.

Since we were going to have dinner later at the winery, and we knew that Pablo Royo was going to sit on the same table, whith nobody watching, Lamberto decided to extract a bit of liquid from a barrel that contained wine of more than 300 years old, and pour it into Pablo Royo's cup during the dinner. Suddenly, Pablo got very takative, and some kind of energy with wine smell emanated from him. Awesome

Saying goodbye at the very end of the reunion...

After all this movement I needed some rest, and the best choice was to take couple of days off for a long weekend in the green and beautiful Asturias. 25% of my blood comes from there actually. After 10 years it was great to be there again and enjoy once more landsapes like this one.

Jobita

Asturias can be very dangerous for your weight if you like eating, because literally, everything is delicious. Jabalí, corzo, perdiz, chorizo, potajes, fabada, cecina, bollo preñao, cabrales, sidra, huevos revueltos con gambas, marisco, queso la peral......I am sweating again....

And to finish...Univeristy reunion. Rebeca comes from Andorra to stay at cuchaus and we have a dinner at Francesc place to celebrate we have annother wedding this summer. Albert is getting married.

Romina Power

Having the mobile always ready allowed me to cpature this amazing dance by the king of the club that night: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNeHUmE4dJA

Chema nos ha dejado

2008-04-16T21:35:00.008+02:00

Yesterday, while I was in the gym doing the minimum exercise in order to go asap into the sauna, in the subtitles of the news I read that "Chema", the baker of the Spanish version of Sesame Street (Barrio Sesamo) had died. I thought that as a dedicatory to Chema, at least I should dedicate a few lines again to Espinete, Chema and their friends of Barrio Sesamo.

For the non-Spaniards: Inside the Spanish version of Sesame street, there was a mini-series with a hedgehog called Espinete as the star (see pic below); a friendly, pink, asexual, with female voice, who lived in Barrio sesamo mainly with lots of kids, another strange character called Don pin-pon, a girl whose name I do not remember and of course, Chema, the (dead) baker.

By looking backwards, I think that Espinete was a good character for that kind of TV program. Of undefined nature, all kids liked him (her), and that I think this is not easy. For example, his successor in TV after Barrio sesamo ended was an awful orange alien called Yupi that nobody liked, just as Muzzy, another alien of the time (from a BBC program) who was supposed to teach english to the Spanish children by just saying "Hello, I am Muzzy" all the time!! All the time same sentence: Hello, I am Muzzy...again and again...

Espinete looks quite strange now once we left the childhood, but still I think even though one could accuse him of being a bit of a faggott (just a bit) nowadays, he would have never received the same accusations that falled over that purple teletubby by one famous American conservationist priest some years ago.

I think that with the permission of 'Bola de Cristal', Chema and the barrio sesamo crew were a good program for children. A good point in between the too naive Marco (the guy with the little monkey Amedio), Heidi and the thousands of shitty series and tv programs that children enjoyed in the following years after.

Below: Don Pin Pon, Espinete, Chema, and the girl whose name I do not remember.

And here, by far, the best character of Barrio Sesamo...

Chema, rest in peace, and many thanks!!

New inhabitant at cucuhaus

2008-04-05T22:15:00.011+02:00

We have new inhabitant at cucuhaus. He is grey, does not speak much....and unfortunately does not belong to me. However, I have tried some functionalities, and I like it. Presenting...

Holy week at cucuhaus

2008-03-29T12:08:00.008+01:00

Good Friday evening in the sofa, recovering a bit from the long Holy Thursday night and watching Ben-Hur one more time, when we comment on the unusual high level of the noise outside in the street. I was thinking about another shopping madness evening in Portal de l'Angel. However, the noise was of a different kind.

Via crucis down the street

Organized by the house of Extremadura in Barcelona, which is in front of our place, we followed from the terrace the procession. In Spain, the people participating in the processions are from different cofradías (confraternities), and each of them wears the typical penitential robe of Nazareno.

At the pass of the virgin, it is common, especially in the south of Spain, that a person sings a song called saeta. This kind of song, of religious origin and that the influence of flamenco transformed, is usually singed by the people in the street, as a pray to the virgin or the Christ that goes in the procession.

Amstedaaaaaaam weekend. Blog is back

2008-03-20T19:15:00.025+01:00

First of all, sorry for the long blog absence. I lost my camera in a ski trip some weeks ago, and I have been very sad since then (in reality I did not lost it, but it would be very unpolite to write here that a friend of mine lost it when she left my poor camera abandoned inside a bag in front of the hotel). I loved that camera, and this blog has lived from its pictures since it was born. Anyway, just a weekend in Amsterdam has been enough to solve the camera situation (Schipol Airport offer, got a new Sony Cyber-shot with 950,000 megapixels and 2 milion hours battery for 120 eur), the bogging absence, and other things such as not seeing the people from iese that I met there for some time.

AMSTERDAM

Projection Bias definition: Think that future preferences/views will be similar or the same than current preferences/views.

I did not think about this when I talked to Lena some weeks ago, and she told me that Pablo, Oriol and Vlad would be going to Amsterdam for a weekend to meet her and Ryan, and that I should join them in the mini-IESE reunion. Well, at that moment I thought it would be good to go, but I had other things in mind which were upwards in the list, so I said to Lena that I would love to see them again but it was not going to be the 14th of March in Amsterdam.

2 weeks later I find myself flying to Breda for work, and a few hours later, while having lunch with a Belgium colleague (if eating a tuna-mayo sandwich at 12:00 in a meeting room is considered lunch) who was complainig about the Dutch habit of drinking milk during lunchtime in the office, I start to receive emails from my friends who would be meeting in Amsterdam the next day for the weekend. Suddenly, an impulse that I did not feel until that mid-day makes me type "vuelos barcelona amsterdam" on my laptop keyboard several times. 10 minutes later a phone operator from KLM mentions that I have to pay more than 800 eur to go to Amsterdam. Damn it!! Once more, my intuition has proved wrong, and 2 weeks after the phone conversation with Lena, I am valuing much higher the fact of being in Amsterdam with her, Pablo, Ryan, Oriol and Vlad for 3 days (ok, not 800 eur, but a lot higher than two weeks before). At least I still haven't heard that suffering from Projection Bias is a very very bad thing with no remedy.

Anyway, I managed to get a "not so ridiculously expensive" flight for the day after, and finishing work earlier on friday, there I was eating my friday night KLM sandwich. Another good sentence from our decision analyis class: The later a task is completed, the higher the cost (especially true when buying flights and dish-washing).

Around 12:30 I make it to Ryan's place, where everybody is waiting, and then I realize how stupid I was when thinking about not going to Amsterdam. Some beers on friday night and go to sleep not very late to be ready for the touristic day.

Lena, my host in Amsterdam.

After breakfast and a mini-bike tour, we go to a bike rental place so that everybody is full-equiped to go around the city day and night.

Racing in the canal while hearing Vlad shouting to Pablo "vamos Indrain!!!" (for Miguel Indurain) was quite an experience, especially for the people walking, who were a bit in danger because of Pablo Royo's ability of braking with a pedal-braking bike.

Pablo: Groot Problem!!!

Afternoon in Amsterdam terraces and then, of course, we are tourists, we had to go to the red light district.

We ask the Indian guy running a strange bar with no alcohol if the juices in the menu are natural, and the answer is "Yes, of course, everything is natural, very good juice". So we start ordering juices and Vlad asks for a juice of two tastes. The guy says that combinations of flavours are not possible, only what is in the menu ? ? ? Ok well, then just an apple juice.

Here myself enjoying one of those home-made "natural" juices. If you have to work in a place with "not very clean" air the whole day, one of the results may be that you end up confusing the concepts natural and "completely artificial with no taste" when talking with your about to be customers.

Vlad: Look at that girl man! uhhaaaa!!

me: Vlad, that is not a girl

Vlad: What do you mean, not a girl??

me: I am telling you that almost half of those girls in the windows are not exactly what they look like.

Vlad: What? This is onlybecause the afternoon shift is not so good as the night shift.

Ryan: Of course! There are no men here, no way

me: It does not matter. I am telling you that the girl there was not a girl, that was definetely a man.

Vlad: Shut up! you are sick!

Sunday: Rain and cold. My initial saturday thoughts abbout living in Amterdam are changing a bit after facing weather reality. However, I get up early and go to see if I can visit at least the Rijksmuseum while the rest of the group prefers to stay warm in front of Ryan's Wii. The 100m cue of people holding their umbrellas in front of the museum and my headache make me reassess my cultual needs of the day, so I change plans and join the group again for a recovering coffee. After all, that was not supposed to be a museum weekend at all.

We would like to thank:

- Lena Perepelova and Ryan Kern for their hospitality in Amsterdam

- Olga Espinosa (lo de la camera no anava amb mala intenció jeje no te m'enfadis ;-)

- Franz Heukamp for his lessons about perception of time and decision making

More blood of Christ

2008-01-26T11:20:00.000+01:00

It has been a long week of work in La Rioja, but at the same time we had the opportunity to continue expanding our wine knowledge and visiting some of the best wineries in the world (if not the best). Inside, centuries of knowledge about the dark liquid, and very interesting explanations and stories about land, grapes, people, culture and tradition.

Bodegas RODA. Visiting of primary fermentation space.

Once the yeast has done its job in converting the grape juice into ethanol, wine is transferred into oak barrels. Here a man preparing the tasting of some of the wines in the middle of the ageing process.
After asting some of the best RODA's wines, we haeded towards Bodegas Marques de Riscal. Here the 5star hotel that they built some years ago in front of the winery. Designed by Frank Gehry.

Our visit to the second winery of the day offred a different perspective compared to what we saw in the other wineries, and it was curious to see the contrast between the small and traditional wineries as compared to the marketing anb business orientation of Marques de Riscal. A girl that talked like a robot and looked as if she was repeating the same words 100 times a day accomapined us in a rapid tour around the hotel, followed by the visit to the winery (which, to be fair, was quite interesting too) and of course the final wine tasting.

Since hundreds of years ago, in the room below they store some of the best bottles produced every year. It is a very humid place, with no light and zero movement or noise of any kind (except the visits like ours ?). A room like this one is the real proof that wine has no expiring date (you can die from drinking water, not wine....well, depending on the quantity). These bottles are only opened in very special ocasions or purchased in auctions, and they have to be opened with an incandescent iron to cut the fragile old glass and treated with the softest movements.
In the winery they say that Frank Gehry was convinced to design the hotel building in this room. They opened a bottle from the year the architect was borned, and as soon as he tried it the magic of wine made its presence in the mouth of the architect convincing him to design the hotel. Maybe they added at the same time one or two zeros to the contract figures, but the convincing factor, of course, was the wine.

Final Bottling and labelling process.

The last winery of the day, and the best one in my opinion was Muga. The explanations of the grandson of one of the founders about the winemaking process were really interesting.
In the pic below, the group listening carefully to the "fining" process. In Muga and in most wineries, this process is done by adding about 300 egg whites to each of these huge vessels, and albumin does the rest.
The fact that is the electric charge of the albumin protein that produces the desired effect of removing unwanted particles in the fining process has been discovered not so far ago. There was a Spanish saying for describing the taste of good wine: "sabe a francés" (tastes French). Well, as you may know, your blood contain also lots of albumin to transport oxygen. The story tells that during the war against the French in the beggining of 19th century, some people from the region decided that the recipients and the fermentation environment of wine were a good place to hide some dead french bodies. It happened that wine comming from those turned out to be really good, and here you had the saying "it tastes french". True? First it was discovered that meat had a good fining effect on wine, and then that it was in fact the blood of that meat which produced the effect. Now we rely more on Albumin....not such a mess as blood! Although using different kinds of blood is still legal and used.

Muga is the only winery where they produce their own barrels from the wood of the best French oak woods.
More of Muga

Now I feel like drinking another good cup of wine so lets finish this post here

Love probability

2008-01-19T20:20:00.000+01:00

Last weekend we found an interesting ad in the toilet of a bar in Gracia.

"The probability that the love of your life is in this restaurant is of 0.00073%" Not very encouraging uh! Given that it was a not very fancy libian restaurant with nothing similar to a woman inside, we decided it was time to leave and invest our beers in a bar with a higher love probability.

Well, in fact, the probability of finding the love of your life in that bar is about 0.0007231% higher than winning the Christmas lottery in Spain. So every time you would meet with some friends in that place, even if its the farthest thing from being a cool bar, you may end up ordering more beers than you initially thought depending on what is your opinion about 0.00073% (It may look a pretty discouraging number but there are thousands of overoptimistic people in this world).

If it happens to you that you find the love of your life in the bar and after some years it becomes the "not so much love" of your life for any reason, you may decide to come back given that 0.00073% proved not to be such a low number for you (otherwise why would people who have gained something in the christmas lottery would continue playing?). In that second attempt you would be facing then a 0,000000005329% probability because of the repetition issue (0.00073% times 0.00073%....I think...).

Of course, the next probable move for a probability flirter like you would be to go and search for another bar with such kind of advertisement to invest your beers, but this time you may look for a bar with a higher love probability.

In fact, someone could think this could be a nice thing to have in the door of any bar. Imagine you are discussing with your nerdy friends where is the next move that night. "Eh guys, they have opened a new place with a 0.008% probability" Let's go!!! That could work for a couple of times. However, since more desperate guys would run into a bar with such a high probability, the invisible hand of the dating market would rapidly adjust the love probabilty, and you would have to change again to abtain a reasonable probability.

Ok, this was a bit too long for a curious pic that took in a toilet with my brand new phone.

Anyway, forget all that nonsense you have read in this post before. Now some pics from these last weeks in which we have had some visitors.

Lindy, Kathy, Claudia, Cary and Lena ready to do some sales shopping. Of course I decided it was time to dissapear as soon as I heared to 5 girls talking about some afternoon shopping.

Matt decided to go back to the states after 2.5 years in Barcelona. Man we will miss you!!! This blog wishes you good luck in your new life in New York.

Alex having difficult decision while chosing among 35 types of grappa

Tammy and Angel

Next week we are heading towards LaRioja, so I will try to come back with more winery pics if I am not too busy just drinking them.

After christmas suggestion

2008-01-10T20:03:00.000+01:00

An after Christmas suggestion:
Change your January budget and instead of getting what you were thinking before, enter in a ski shop and get a pair of Dynastar. Send an email to some friends (and wait if anyone answers) and arrange a transportation method to the closest mountains. That would me my suggestion for this year, and a very good gone.
It is good for using the huge amount of energy that you have been accumulating over various long meals, dinners and other family and friends reunions.
That fresh air of the mountains, nice to see you again!
Ski breakfasts are the best! Ah, and after-ski dinners as well!
There is a lot of philosophy thinking during lift conversations, and you can also see people falling or enjoy the landscape.
Everybody is in a good mood (well, this is quite normal during holidays).

Well, there are much more reasons supporting my after-Christmas suggestion, and I do not have to convince anyone, so....YES, after the disastrous year (in snow speaking terms) that we had last year, which was only saved by the fabulous easter trip "England-ROW" narrated in this blog, we went to ski again with non-artificial January snow. I am sure this will be a big accomplishment when in a few years Spain won't have either rain or snow.

I forgot to say that is important to NOT forget your sticks when you go to ski in a crowded day after putting pressure into everyone to get up very early to be the first ones in the slopes, especially if you then have to do an hour of cue to rent a pair of sticks while everybody is waiting.

Some pics from the first week of 2008...somewhere in the Pyrinees.

View of La Cerdanya from the lift

The minigroup

Same minigroup

Last but not least. Minipart of the minigroup

PD: Si practicas snow como Aleix y Dani, no te preocupes, nadie es perfecto en este mundo.

Entering 2008

2008-01-02T19:50:00.000+01:00

Wellcome 2008. It was good to receive you @ cucuhouse (This year's place of choice for all kind of events). Of course, it was not going to be different in Ney year's eve. Menu included plenty of seafood from "La Boqueria", salads and a 200 kg fuet by Blinder&Jen, meat by Marta&Dani, grapes and other stuff by Carlos&Laia and drinks by Edgar. Xavi brought his last minute presence in the house when we were all a bit too happy because of too much sparkling golden liquid.

All the good purposes for 2008 in cucurulla are too long (and repetitive) to be posted here. Half of them are almost the same of last year...actually, more than half I think. But since we repeat so many wishes year after year, and at least this year we can say that it has been a really good year, the main one for 2008 is that everything continues at least as good. Our best wishes for this upcomming year!!

And now we are almost at the end of this eating race that is Christmas....only to wait for the three wise men to bring us presents, another huge family lunch that will make us suffer next monday at work....and lots of snow during 2008.

Since I have decided to switch from finally buying a 125cc scooter (and make my mother a bit angry) to buying a pair of skis, lots of snow this winter would make us happy, and that would be a good start for this year. Salut!

Feliz Navidad

2007-12-24T12:31:00.000+01:00

This is definetely a pro-Christmas blog, and we are celebrating with our families and friends these days.
I would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and all the best for 2008!!

We are back in 2008....do not forget!

I need to buy....something

2007-12-19T20:37:00.000+01:00

Hey you! Yes, you! What are you doing sitting there reading this. How can you be so quiet and relaxed while surfing the net? Don't you feel it? This need that is bothering you all the day...Come on, you can be as everybody else! Just stand up, get dressed for a bit of cold (but not too much, this is Barcelona after all), and take whatever commuting machine you want that goes towards Pl.Catalunya. Of course, you should carry with you some money (the more the merrier), and you can fulfill a basic human need in Christmas. Consuming, buying stuff!!

And, please, do it in Cucurulla street! As you can see, we need even more people down the street these days!

Un Ribera por favor

2007-12-12T19:36:00.000+01:00

A good way of spending 3 days with some friends, among milions of choices:

Chose a big house in a small town in the middle of nowhere and then meet there with your friends coming from all around the country to enjoy basially 3 things: the menioned friends, food, and wine.

If it happens that the house is in one of the most famous wine-making regions, full of wineries and good traditional restaurants, and you haven't seen the people for some time...better! Ahh, and if those restaurants are by chance, spezialized in cooking "21 day lambs only feed with milk" o sea "lechazo", even better!!

Campaspero (Valladolid). As you can see, a lot of movement in a saturday winter morning.

The same more or less happens at night...

The house & Chesco

I forgot to say at the beggining that if the house you chose has hot water for everyone in the morning, of course, once more, much better!!

After sleeping for 12 hours and still digesting the amount of food from the first night, it was time for the touristic tour around the region. And that means basically to go from one winery to another learnig something about making wine and even more about drinking wine (which is the most interesting part of wine tasting by the way).

Bodegas Emilio Moro (Ribera del Duero)

This big bottle we could not finished it (las cosas ya no son lo que eran)

More wine tasting...

This is what happens when you spend a weekend tasting wine.

I was good to see you all again ! ! !

4 days of Holiday...comming back next weeeeek

2007-12-05T22:20:00.000+01:00

"What a night uh!!! Almost makes you not wanna go back to work! Don't go!! Don't go!!"

Perry farrel live during the beggining of Kettle Whistle (track 01 - So what!)

1000 ways of reaching this blog

2007-11-28T20:51:00.001+01:00

Okay I understand that is post can be of little interest for some people. However, as I have been using "control C and control V" for some time when investigating the origin of the casual readers of this blog, lets make a bit useful this repetitive movement of my little and index fingers (I am still talking about the control c control v here), and publish the second - as far as I remember - market study of "The cucuhouse blog google casual readers". Next time we will change this long name but is ok for today.
Readers are allocated according to different categories chosen by....me of course. The source of the results comes from what one can see in the blog visitor statistics when clicking on the link to the blog that google returns for a certain search. Also, nationalities are avoided not to help creating false stereotypes such as "see, I told you, people from country X only only search for porn stuff in google".

Participating categories:
Switzerland (since this blog was originated there about a year and a half now)
Lapland & snow
Food & drinks
Porn & dirty stuff (including some economics)
Miscelaneous
Special section

From Switzerland…
Skiing In Rhine
Sunday lunch in luzern
Transexual Interlaken (??!!??)
How to pronounce guten tag in german (No way this blog will help you on this. Very sorry)

A Nordic country selection…
Lapland bath in snow (One of the best things I have done)
Sauna snow blog naked (I believe I could have started a whole new blog about this lovely activity)

From Food & drinks…
Best anti-depressant food
How to cook girello meat (Just follow the instructions in one of the recent posts)
Napolitanian coffee (The best)

From the dirty category…Few comments on this category. However, I have to say this blogger is a bit worried that so many searches that have made it to this extremely competitive contest are inside this category. Ok lets follow, not much more to go…

Girls being undressed
Most famous drogadicts
Drug addict behavior
Kissing a smoker (I highly recommend doing this)
Positive externalities + smoking (There are!)
Transexual transformation (If you want…)

From Miscelaneous…
La moto fantastica (Esto no existia, se llamaba el coche fantástico chaval!!!)
"Marc Never" novartis (I don’t like this one and I am a bit worried. Further investigation will follow)
OK and one more thing. (Oooookaaayyy)
What time xxxx it close? (Why not to google xxxx first? Lets start from the beginning don’t you think?)
The couple is lying in an amazing wooden house (amazing search, yes!)

And finally, the 2 special prizes of "the google-cucuhouse contest" go to..

1) Describe one of your normal days? (Get up @ 7:30, drink a whiskey sauer, go out and ski in rhine for 3 hours. Take la moto fantastica and go for a long sauna with snow bath. Lunch with anti-depressant food and girello. Afternoon in the beach kissing a smoker and then lots of girls being undressed)

2) Nice people (Of course, this is what you find if you google us)

This study has been done with the help of StatCounter, some time (very very few) of "light work" in the office, and of course...Google.

Cadavre Exquis...a project of Gerard C. aka Vader

2007-11-24T13:26:00.000+01:00

The project Cadavre Exquis – Dibuixa’t la ciutat – proposes an analysis and a later reflection about the contemporary city, by making available to the inhabitants – the real protagonists – a discussion framework about the City.

Given that is in the bars and restaurants where an environment prone to debate and discussion is created, the authors propose that the individual paper tablecloth commonly used there serve as a physical space to draw and therefore express different ideas about the city. By substituting the usual message “Have a good meal” (“Bon Profit”) that one can find in paper tablecloth, for the motto of the project “Dibuixa’t la Ciutat”, they pretend to build a scenario that allows the active participation of citizens, making them the main characters of it.

Each tablecloth becomes a cartography that is stored and exposed in an area of the CCB (Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona) within the framework of the Festival BAC’07 (International Festival of Contemporary Art in Barcelona), this year under the title “BacBabylon”. At the same time these tablecloth will be used in the lunch-debate to be held at the closure of BAC’07 in the CCCB, becoming both physical support and discussion framework to the festival participants.

In parallel, these cartographies have been digitally recorded and constitute a big cartography about the city which can be found on the website: www.cadavreexquis.net, in the form of a Cadavre Exquis, an instrument used by the surrealists from the twenties which allowed to participate individually in a group drawing, and therefore to show on the table the resulting total expression of the group of players. This technique enhances the friction between different opinions, and as a consequence becomes a generative instrument of new readings and situations.

In conclusion, the authors want to create a dense accumulation of different realities, a big New Babylon built, literally, with the people that live in the city.

Mr & Mrs Littell or my first American wedding plus NYC

2007-11-10T20:21:00.000+01:00

And here we go again with another wedding. This time a bit farther than ususal, and that means...tachaaann...Pennsylvania (or pensulveinia to be more vocal). So I finished work last tuesday and start packing for my first American wedding and a short visit to New York. Last time I was there..mmm..about 10 years ago, so I am even more excited to be there than the first time. I am ready to eat some bagels in the morning, hot dog for brunch, couple of burgers at lunchtime, money spending late afternoons (last time I was there the exchange rate with the dollar was a bit different), and then walk, walk, walk and walk through the whole island of Manhattan, trying to get the most of my only two and a half days in the city.

Arriving at JFK after atching 2 gay movies. The first one starring woody harrelson as the walker, and then Brokeback Mountain. The woman sitting at my right handside looks at me in the middle of those cowboy sex scenes during my second gay movie of the day, and I had the absurd thinking of "I think that she thinks that I think that she thinks I may be gay". Anyway, Brokeback Mountain turned to be a very good movie.

Anosha is waiting for me at the airport. Thursday night in NYC. Noelle is doing a party at a bar and we met with some iese people, including Roberto and Manuel, our Mexican wedding partners in Pennsylvania. Bad thing is that by the time of my second Rum&Coke it is like 9am for me and I feel tired as if comming out from an after hours. Tomorrow we have a wedding, lets go to sleep pleeeeeaase!!

Pennsylvania. Official meeting at Pittsburgh airport with the mexicans and Onno, who is comming from London. Very intense closed bidding with 5 rental car companies. At the end we thought we had a good deal with a "Ford Escape" from Budget. However, after drinving for 2 hours, the roads get smaller and we finish in a path closed by a fence in the middle of a Forest. Then we realize that the sensual female voice comming out from the GPS was talking shit all the time, or in other words, the GPS obviously does not work and we are in a place where "Jason" can appear any second to kill us all before we see Andrew and Margo getting married. We stay unite and find a gas station with a nice local girl that indicates how to make it to The Summit Inn. We are here!! Presentations with everyone, some food, and get ready for a long saturday.

Autumn Saturday morning landscape in PA. Visiting fallingater house by Frank Lloyd Wright and some nice walk in the forests. Gabe is comming from Albany and we all come back to our rooms to get dressed.

Andrew and Margo after being married. I had the honour of reading a poem in the ceremony, and that meant a lot to me.

Andrew and Gabriel

Monterrei connection

The group

I guess this is the same in every country. Confirmed by Andrew Littell, once you are married, you are done. I mean, you are a husband, and there is an even stronger link to your girl. So strong, that you do not have to worry anymore about certain things. Meaning, you can even wear a pair of trousers with coloured ducks on them. She will love you the same, and you do not have to impress more women than your wife with your fashion clothing.

Forgot to mention that in our trip back from the wedding we almost lose the airplane. We were lucky because of two things. One was Gabriel determination to lead us on time to the airport. And he did it! Another was the help of some Pennsylania locals in gas station of a small town of unknown name. Gabriel ended up buing a map after hearing various opinions

Strange man - But why don't you go to this other airport? Is much closer

2nd strange man - Where are you going?? You have to...well, something like this but in a pronunciation I could not understand

I also asked the woman working in the gas station store if I could use the bathroom

woman - Oh I am sorry but you can not use the bathroom, police are investigating.... ? ? ? ? ?

New York City:

Being in NYC is always special. There are other cities much far away, more exotic, more beautiful, more relaxing (of course!), even bigger. However, at least for me, being in NYC is special. First time I was there I was shocked together with my cousins that the smoke comming from under the streets was real and not a movie invention, more or less the same as with the yellow cabs, the huge buildings, the rithm of the city, and the environment in Central Park. As for the mentioned smoke, thanks to my personal tourist guide Anosha, I know now that many of the high rise buildings in New York are powered by steam in a network that is 50 to 100 years old. Steam is used as this is both more cost effective and efficient than many other systems for heating tall buildings. It's also used for sterilising equipment in some hospitals. Most of the steam plumes that you see coming out of manholes are due to water touching the outside of these steam pipes and becoming vapour. Okaay!

Carol

Carol, Carl and un servidor

Anosha and Carol

Poem for a wedding:

Soneto XVII by Pablo Neruda

No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio

o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego:

te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,

secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.

Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva

dentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores,

y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo

el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra.

Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde,

te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:

así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera,
sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres,

tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,

tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.

sabor cubano in cucurulla

2007-10-28T13:22:00.000+01:00

As almost eveything in life, there are positive and negative aspects associated with living in cucuhouse. For example, friday night, right after we decided to come back home, it started raining quite hard. The result was a flood in our bathroom of considerable size. The pipe from the bathroom tap is somewhere obstructed below our level (very obstructed to be precise), and all the water coming down from the terrace was going straight to our sink. After 5 minutes, my room, which is the closest one to the bathroom, was in high danger. At the same time, when the panic was starting to make its presence in the house, the girl from emergency service was telling me on the phone that firemen are not allowed to come to a house if there is less than about 40 cm of water. 40cm!!! What the hell!!! That was a really bad situation. Fortunately, the rain stopped right after the scene turned really dramatic, and we finished cooking spaghetti at 5am after cleaning everything.

As the spaghetti made a difference in our state of humor the other day, arriving at cucuhouse after a long day of work can be sometimes a good turnaround for your mood, and you will walk the last meters of street thinking that life is beautiful and there is no negative side. The video below is from one of those days. Sabor cubano in cucurulla. 5 min of positive vibration.

Gabi un millon de gracias por ayudarnos a salvar la casa!!!

Remembering

2007-10-25T00:24:00.000+02:00

It just happened this week that some friends from IESE have visited Barcelona again. This time in business trip of course (after all, that is one of the reasons that we did an MBA), and for very few hours. It is good to see good friends living abroad again, even if it is just for a few beers.

"How's life man??! You know that I have heared that...."

Yesteday Yannis was in Barcelona, and Tonight Tom was in town for a daytrip, and he even visited cucuhouse!

The pics below do not have anthing to do with what is going around this week at cucuhouse. They are just a reminder of good times with good friends that are not here anymore (and that is a shame!). So by Tom's courtesy, here are some good pics from last year.

Finishingthe night at Harry and Elif's place. Somewhere in Gracia...quite late in the night...

Pilares 2007 (with delay)

2007-10-19T21:29:00.000+02:00

There has not been a lot going on this weekend in Barcelona. The winter seems to have said "Aloha...I am comming!", this blogger was working Saturday all day long, Barça lost yesterday, and the final result of the F1 chanpionship does not look very promising (to me, of course). Well, a good film by David Kronenberg saved the night yesterday, and today is a very nice day. However, I think I will put some more pics from last weekend in Zaragoza instead.

The parties of Zaragoza (Pilares) was a good choice for various reasons. It was my first time there and I reccomend everybody to go if you never have been in Zaragoza the 12th of October.

After arriving to the city we could see the flower offering that people from the city, dressed in traditional clothes, make to the virgin of El Pilar. The story says that the virgin appeared in front of the apostle Santiago (do not ask me how), and ask him to build a church in the marble pilar where he was standing. That is why the basilic and the virgin in Zaragoza are called "El Pilar".

During all day, everybody leaves their bunch of flowers in front of the virgin. And the result after some hours is quite impressive.

Gitanillos con organillo y la cabra (This pic, I can not explain in Enlish....some "traditional" Spanish view that is difficult to see nowadays)

An then, of course...Party. That was the main reason to go to Pilares. Here the group of girls

From top

Gracias Lorena por la invitación. Lo pasé genial en Zaragoza.

Zaragoza & classic F1

2007-10-15T23:09:00.000+02:00

Since one member of the cucurulla crew is in Montreal and the other had to go to a wedding (I say "had" because if it happens to you that you have to go to a wedding, is always better that before packing you make sure you will be able to get a ticket to come back, right David?); well, the thing is that I decided to take Lorena's invitation and go to Zaragoza for the weekend. Clever choice. It was really good and I had such a really good time at night that I forgot to take the typical pics that I would post here. (Next post about Pilares 2007).

In the meantime, I can show you some pics from Sunday instead. Once recovered from the friday night at Pilares 2007 I woke up Sunday decided to watch some old F1 that were brought to Barcelona to celebrate the 75 anniversary of the Montjuïc circuit. Yes, we had a F1 circuit in the city.....until some people died. And if you have a look at those cars going at about 50 km/h and try to imagine the same cars racing in the same place (this time adding about 100 Km/h more)...That was quite dangerous.

MARTINI LEGENDS was the name of the event. And leading the goup of F1 from the seventies, Mr.Emerson Fittipaldi in his gold and black "John Special player". If you like cars you know which one I am talking about....

ani-hangover cannoli

2007-10-08T21:01:00.000+02:00

It has been a while that weekends at cucrulla offer a wide variety of beverages.
Without taking into account the inauguration party, which can be considered an exception because no alcohol was permitted....mmm.......; The house nº1 rule (Whenever you go to London you bring back a bottle of Laphroaig), together with the sudden predilection for Tequila that Gabi aka Blinder has acquired recently, the rediscovering of the old Barcelona, and well, The F1 being so early in the morning on tv lately, have made the mornings a bit hard in terms of gastric and cephalic problems. Today at work (Monday) I was not the only one commenting on the quiet and soft Sunday mornings with a recovering coffee and lots of orange juice because of some kind of dehidratation. The thing is that we started a conversation about the effects of different kinds of food over the body functions and moods.

My colleague Vanesa elaborated on the anti-depressant properties of peas, and then the conversation turned into what is supposed to be good and bad stuff for your organism. It is curious how we act with those things. Have you ever ate a huge pasta dish and some copious meet and then ordering a coffee with edulcorant instead of a mini-bag containing 0.1gr of sugar that your body will burn in 2 min? A friend of mine was mentioning the other day the fabulous properties of vitamin B for many biological functions and some vegetables very good for the skin while he was lighting one of the 30 cigarettes that he smokes every day.

Peas are good for depression because they contain an element that the body transforms into one of the archifamous B vitamins, which if you happen to have very very very few of it...well, then your serotonin release in the neuronal space would be probably altered and then you may be a bit depressed (the serotonin part has not been checked by this writer so do not believe much in this second part).

Anyway, the final result of this post is a recommendation to all of you that come back home a bit too happy some Fridays and Saturdays night, and then the next morning have conversations with your friends (or with yourself, which happens a lot) about which miraculous food/drink could take away all that dehidratation, cephalea and gastric irritation. Thanks to the cucurulla bar and club investigations over many weekends, a rigorous research on the topic, the existence of this web page....and the Italo-mafia-movie-series trend that continues in the house....well, you have it: CANNOLI

Yes, Sicilian cannoli. Soft cheese with sugar to protect your stomach and provide you with that glucose intake that will make that tiredness sensation (coming from the increased glucose release that alcohol produces) dissapear, with a bit of bread and the fruit containing the famous vitamins that will give you the freshness sensation to spend a good Sunday morning doing plenty of activities before preparing copious lunch with your family or friends (of course, preceded by a couple of beers and lots of good red wine to accompaign......just to counteract the too-beneficial effect of cannoli in your bodily functions).

Here you can see a typical human cucurulla inhabitant experiencing the cannoli experience.

PS: Many thanks to Francesca for the Cannoli ;-)

Cucuhouse turns red!

2007-09-26T20:40:00.000+02:00

Finally, after an almost 2 year delay, we had the cucuhouse party. First of all, thanks to all the people who came to enjoy the evening. It was great to have so many old and not so old friends here. Also, I have to say, minithanks to the people who could not make it for leaving a bit of space in the house ;-) Although you missed a good one and we would have liked to have you here.

There is though some facts that we have decided to investigate in depth after the party, by the evidences left all around the house. I am talking about the can of beer found dead (2 knife wounds) inside our toilet. And when I mean inside the toilet I mean very inside the toilet. The suicide has been discarded by the house committee. Also, the smaller crime of entertaining oneself by introducing sandwitches inside glasses of cava (or....cheap champagne for some) will be closely followed.

Anyway, here some of the suspects. Fotos are a bit blurred to protect privacy of the culprits.

After party morning...or the issues of living right in the center of a city:

Everything that goes up......Lets say that after a moment of water supplemented with ibuprofen in the kitchen I was about to have my last long sleep when...well, there was a situation down the street, and I, resigned, decided that maybe was worth it to take a little video. Then I found that Vader had the same problem.

Drums are not the best thing for the day after a cuchouse party.

We are burning the flat, finally!

2007-09-20T01:15:00.000+02:00

The house is ready, the cucu is ready.....are u ready?
This friday....If you can not make it....do not wory, we will have a drink for you! ! !

PS: Cucuhous (Yes, cucuhous, not cucuhouse for this time) illumination has changed to dark-sensual red colour. Whorehouse style, but very elegant at same time of couse. Style is very important.

Pics and stories to come

A tavola si scordano li trivuli

2007-09-17T00:04:00.000+02:00

In cucina a cucuhouse: Sicilia and mafia culture (especially the second) have become an all-time presence in the house for some time lately. Influences vary from our dvd that has been reading "the godfather" and "the sopranos" quite a lot, to other Italian influences (ehemm), without forgetting our predilection for the "chandal" style of mafiosi, good home-made cucina, and the red colour (for blood). The video was recorded when cooing for la famiglia.

Girello Imbottito

Ingredients:

A huge piece of beef
Pecorino
Salchichon/salami
2-3 pieces of Garlic & 1 Ognion
1 glass of red wine
2 spoons of tomato concentrated
6 spoons of olive oil (When I say olive oil, I mean extra-virgin olive oil, of course!)
Meat soup
Salt & Pepper
Music & guns

Put the "salsichon", the garlic and the pecorino inside the meat, and add salt and pepper. Close the meat and fry it with the ognion (small-cutted) until all sides are done and the ognion has good colour. Dilute the concentrated of tomato in the glass of wine and add it. When the wine has evaporated, cook the meat for 1 hour at medium fire while adding the meat soup every once in a while.

Deserts: Cannoli

Piacere e salute! Cent'Anni!

Big Mark gets married....The story of my first english wedding

2007-09-11T23:09:00.000+02:00

I have to say, after this weekend, that I am thinking about getting married at the English style. Or should I say at Mark's style....oh well, or at Sarah's style to be more precise. Anyway, Mark's Templeman wedding has been a really good weekend in South-West England.

However, not everthing was so beautiful as you can see in the pics below. My journey to Cornwall (The place where the wedding took place, with amazing landscape and a place that I reccomend to visit) started around 2pm in Barcelona, and it was a long one. After an airport confusion with Ryan (mea culpa!!!) I had to go to Oxford to meet Paul and Lena. Flight bcn-Luton, 2 hour bust to central Lodon with a really huge black woman who was an ex-McDonalds worker with claustrophobia inside the bus and who didn't stop speaking. We found peace after finding a common theme: music. She was a fan of Milli Vanilli. Ok, then I took another bus to Oxford from Victoria (another 2 hours). This time (around 11pm already) with a man reading the very personal-enriching newspaper "the sun".

Finally Oxford. Tired, very tired. Ryan had the same bus experience and arrived about the same time. However, Paul's mother cooking abilities made us forget all those travelling hours. And next morning, English breakfast. Ready to go to the wedding! !

Lena booked a cottage for the iese crew in the top of a hill with the view below. Nice

The rest of the group arrives. "How are you man! ! Nice to see you again!"

The wedding. Amazing place for the event. Below, Mark & Sarah.

As you can imagine, after the formalities, a speech from Mark that made everyone's skin change and some people cry, lots of good food, and of course, lots and lots of coloured liquids....Party.

Francis, the ice-cream trolley and the scotish man.

The man of the night

Finishing the night at the cottage.

2nd day. Ibuprofen seems to not work properly. Anyway, nothing better than a walk along the beach to recover, especially when more beers and an entire pig (cooked, of course) are waiting.

Recovering stuff

Sports afternoon.

American football on the beach. Thank god they did not decided to play rugby. Lets say Temps family have not a weak physical constitution. I think that instead of an injured foot I could have returned much worse in that case.

Ana is now a professional baseball player

And of course...Tug of war

Mark, Thank you for everything. It has been great to be at your wedding.

Everything u need is....friends

2007-09-06T23:51:00.000+02:00

Maybe sometimes the headache of doing and redoing your bag, waiting at the airports/train stations, queuing with the car, being really tired after working, going out and then having to travel and going out again....At the end for what?

Just a for few hours with people you like, you are comfortale with and you always have a good time with.

Valencia. Some beers in the beach, good food: Arroz a banda, tellinas, almejas, esgarraet, sal i pebre....good conversations, clubbing (too much), and....That's it, go back home to repack/unpack again. Great!

7 years from now and still remembering the erasmus in Pisa from one city to another. Siempre un placer por supuesto!! A ver si venís a Barcelona en la Mercé. Inauguration party @ cucuhouse....more news (and flyer) comming soon.

Presenting: Eva, Fer, Chesco

Next post will be probably dedicated to Mr.Mark Templeman and his wedding in the most reachable part of England. Cronwall (or something similar). See ya!

Oh! I forgot. Cucuhouse room is ready, 100% completed. Here half of it. Nice uh!!!

Update...si si....que ya era hora. The looongest post (pics only promise)

2007-08-27T19:45:00.000+02:00

Yes yes yes, I know I am the laziest blogger ever, but I did not feel like updating this again...until today. Anyway, I am glad to present you with the cucuhouse blog, which basically is, in its essence, exaclty the same blog as you could see before, with another name, and more main characters. Although I am still in control of this stuff so lets say I will still be the connecting person here, and the one who chooses if you can see a pic here or not. ok stop, lets go for the update.

It has been a strange summer, with the beginning of work again, the short trips to see old and new friends, the shit weather when it is supposed to be good weather and the good weather when it is supposed to be bad weather, and of course, the moving to Cucuhouse (Finally, its done!!). You might say these of couse are not reasons for not updating the blog. Ok, well, then I say it was August, and you know, in August, you (meaning, the whole Spain) is doing Anything, zero. Vacaciones! I only had one week of those though, and I went to visit Esteban in Almeria.
Summer going backwards (basically because I have uploaded the pics in the reverse order)

Rome this weekend. Definetely, an awesome city.

Hypnotic Pantheon

And before Rome, we had some good evenings at Barcelona. July in the city. Pre-inauguracion of Pablo's and David studio.

Cucuhouse inhabitants after Carlitos left the flat

Poker is a traditional monthly activity at cucuhouse.

This pic is really strange. Maybe I was thinking too much.

August holidays: Almeria and Creamfields Villaricos. Sol, playita, cañas, tapas, pescadito, amigos. Really good.

Esteban and his cousin. Gracias por todo tio. El año que viene repetimos!

Creamfileds during the day

Creamfields during the night

Creamfields on the next day. Of course, I went to sleep.

Comming soon...

2007-06-24T21:21:00.000+02:00

The Cucuhouse blog

weeeeeekend.....

2007-05-25T14:33:00.000+02:00

MBAT 2007...the end

2007-05-23T11:53:00.000+02:00

MBA tournament 2007

You can't come to have dinner on Friday?? MBAT ..in Paris?....what? Olympics? Man, you are crazy, ou should start working soon or otherwise....But I am not crazy, and one year more I was an olympic athlete in Paris trying to give the best so that IESE could beat LBS in our second attempt after last year close second position. London Business School won again :-( I think maybe we have the honour of being the first graduation class of losing both years at the MBA Olympics. Wait wait, we did not lose anything. We won the 2nd position with much less people than last year!

HEC campus. Track & Field, rugby, frisbee and fubol field. Awesome.

Me trying to climb. I was average on that. Good enough!

The winners in their base camp

HEC cherleaders....give me some action baby!

IESE rugby team. If you want some live moments from the rugby team, and especially from the "pichichi" Mark Templeman. click here

Small kids enjoy rugby as well

Women's Rugby

From left to right: Kathy, Nani and Lena.

Nani "double punch" fighting for IESE. The winner of the boxing competition and a beautiful girl you'd better be friend of. Btw, if anyone is thinking about a serious violent boxing fight between kitties, that was not exactly the idea of the boing show. Lots of fun...yes.Tug of war. Bocconi in action

Men's cheerleaders

Afternoon cervecitas time

More cervecitas time

Good bye MBAT, good bye MBA! !

Chovar and America's cup

2007-05-08T20:58:00.000+02:00

Short but intensive weekend in Valencia. My cousin Oscar is living there now, and I went to visit him and Silvia in my way to Chovar (the little town where I have spent all my childhood summers). Btw, they are getting married next May...but that's in a year from now anyway.
Saturday morning I decided to go to the beach in Valencia, and then I thought it was a good idea to see what was going on there with that thing called America's cup, which in Spain nobody had heard about until some time ago when a Swiss sailing team (yeah that sounds really weird if you're not into sailing) decided to defend the America's cup from the Americans in Spanish water. Anyway, it was definitely a good choice to go there. Nice morning looking at the ships and enjoying my recently acquired semi-holiday status.

After enjoying the sunny morning I asked the patron of this yacht if he could wait for me and bring me to bcn on monday together with the Möet-Chandon drinking "milfs" that were on the deck of the small boat. He said he would think about it. In the meantime, I decided to go to Chovar to have lunch and enjoy two days of local festivities.

That one below was another option but I didn't feel like sailing to Barcelona. Best with motorized yacht.

Chovar: First prove of the rain Marta and me got in our way down to Valencia. The pond you see in this pic is usually quite dry.

Philipe (french) showing his reaction after knowing Sarkozy victory in France elections and the end of his 35 hour weeks. He has decided to come to live in Spain.

Vaquillas:

Well, I guess this two pictures need an explanation to some people. Quite simple, you release a bull (not so big as the ones you see in official bullfights but quite dangerous anyway) in the streets of the town so that the guys can play a bit with the animal, and that is all. No blood.

Then you can do the same at 12 o 'clock, but this time with a bigger bull, and now with couple of fire balls in its horns (the so called "toro embolado"). This is usual in most of the towns of Valencia and all around the country during summer.
I think it would be a bit long (and boring) to justify here the need or not of these kind of activities, and write about bulls and Spanish traditions. So the best maybe is just to put a small video so you can see how "bulls in the street" are done in Chovar. Good bye and enjoy!

Nintendo wii (entering the adulthood)

2007-04-24T12:15:00.000+02:00

Directed by Francis Lewis
Featuring:
Mark Templeman aka Temps "the killer"
Ryan Kern aka "Rwiian"

job search

2007-04-20T19:44:00.000+02:00

Barcelona mid-april. Spring

Spring break

2007-04-17T17:06:00.000+02:00

I feel like writing something again, at least to celebrate that "normal" weather is back in town again after some weeks of shitty rain. A couple of usual (weather) elevator conversations this morning have confirmed the Monday climate change in Barcelona. Although I agree that rain is an absolutely necessary thing for the land and us humans to be able to enjoy the most precious and necessary of transparent liquids (after gin), and that especially in this country we should be happy to have the most rainy days as possible before this summer, which btw it looks like its going to be a "bit" hot......I am sure the grey sky has a huge (negative) impact in my everyday mood. Yes, I can't do anything about it, I like blue sjy and flip-flops in my feet. And who doesn't!!

So, if not for the hours I dedicate every day to send CVs, prepare interviews and other job-related stuff, I am enjoying the twenty something degrees and the perspective of some sunny days without cases, worries about delivering projects.etc. Maybe prepare some cover letters in the beach. So goooooood. Another good thing that I have been doing again is reading newspapers, articles, books.

Neverthless, there is a "negative" side of having too much free time: Prison Break

Ok lets face reality, after my summer internship I am again a bit addicted to another tv show. All thanks to the recommendations of some friends from bcn, and the websites that my ski trip colleagues suggested to me in order to keep practicing my English listening skills (with Chinese subtitles I have to say).

The best of Prison Break: A man called John Abruzzi, in the picture below. I guess it is a good show because everybody is pretty weird. I mean, in 24 you have Jack Bauer and their anti-terrorist colleagues, but after all they are quite normal people despite the fact that they do not sleep. And Dr.House is in my opinion the most coherent type of guy you can ever meet. Same for Lost, where despite the too strange and endless things that happen in that island, everybody is quite “normal” if we consider we are talking about tv shows. Well, not sure how far I can go with this justifications so lets cut the crap and go straight to Prison Break.

(just an incision: Cut the crap and shitfaced are my two new favorite English epressions. The firs one from the tv shows, the second from my friendship with Brits and rest of the world).

In Prison Break, when you put together a serial killer, a rapist, an schizophrenic kind of man, the boss of the Chicago mafia turned into a catholic devote, an ex-alcoholic and drug addict doctor, a man with too many tattoos and his brother, a latino that wants to escape from prison to touch the belly of his girlfriend again, and the typical movie-tough-black guys from US prisons....well, the tv show is quite interesting.

De postre:

Shitface recipe from the internet
- 2 oz 151 proof rum - (Havana club works the same I guess)
- 1 oz grenadine syrup - (grenade the fruit)
- 1 oz sugar syrup - (or syrup of sugar)
- Orange juice (beer is an option for the very shitface recipe)
Add rum, grenadine, and sugar syrup in glass. Fill with orange juice. Add ice and shake, strain into glass and garnish with marachino cherry. Olé

The Andorran style, adopted in Almeria (Cabo de gata three years ago). Spanish easy shitface recipe aka “Despertador”:
- Rum
- Tia Maria
Add two parts of rum and one of tia maria in a chupito glass (the size of glass is important). Drink it. Enjoy sunny weather when you can. Hasta la próxima!

Googles & Moogles

2007-04-09T12:31:00.000+02:00

Easter 2007. I had a trip to San Sebastian and Bilbao planned. However, a morning msn conversation about the possibility of enjoying the last snow of the year changed our plans. Andorra was the final choice, although Tignes ended in second place in the “resort competition”.

Why ski? You are doing sport while you enjoy nice views of the mountains. If there is some powder from the day before is absolute fun. You have good conversations in the lifts. The shower and relaxing après-ski in the afternoon is also really good (If you can have a proper siesta in between even better). You are hungry all the time so any food tastes good, especially dinner. Same for being thirsty and drinking (However, the tiredness effect can have some negative connotations here). In conclusion, I love skiing.

Easter Andorra Featuring:

Brits 1 (Mark & Tom)

Brits 2 (Paul & John)

ROW (Ryan and Marc. USA and Spain to defend the world against the English domination)

Second day of ski we got lost in the mountain and had to do an unexpected trip across the mountain to not having to sleep in the slopes.

Extreme ski. Tom tries to jump a fence with a heli trick.

ROW again

Tom and Ryan

Starting the après-ski competitions. It was a very competitive Easter I have to say.

More ski pics

Myself in the most difficult offpiste you can ever imagine

The group

After 6 hours of ski, the group is decided to go towards other activities

The lack of water and the high easter temperatures can make you see things that are only in your mind

The summary of the après-ski activities is the following picture, a very good description of our time out of the slopes. Rule number one of the wise Spanish skier: Be careful if you go to ski with 4 Brits and one American, you can end up drinking too much of the oldest and most popular international drink. In the ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia they could not ski during the whole day before having the fermented barley sugar. They missed a good combination.

In the long run. . .

2007-03-30T15:49:00.000+02:00

18 months. That's it. Over. We are done. "se fini". MBA is officially finished today. At least until we see each other together with our families in the graduation ceremony with the most trendy outfit ever.

Last exam, last class, and of course, last futbol game as MBA student today. Quite sad overall, very sad to tell you the truth. So I guess we have to say goodbye to this view. I love the stairs in front of A building, especially when its sunny.

Fom another point of view, I think I am unable to read 20pg Harvard cases anymore, not a single one! Of course, very different from the feeling I had when we started, during the first classes (as this one below of "Analysis of business problems" in the first term of first year), when I was wondering how everything was going to be. Now I can say it has been probably the best period of my life (as far as I remember). For many reasons, good ones and bad ones.

Too many words to write if I want to summarize these 18th months, too many pictures to show, too many friends to fit in a single post. That is why I think the best is just to post a picture of Section A while rememering the people from the other sections as well, and let the proper english writers to occupy this space.

With the permission of Sir. Prof. Tim Sutton, who recited to us this passage at the end of the class:

“Our revels now are ended: these our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind: We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.” …

W. Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1.

Thank you guys. Its been great to know all of you! We stay in touch, for sure!

Futbol weekend

2007-03-25T14:14:00.000+02:00

This friday, the "Exchange team", a team formed of "1st term exchangers" and me, won the semifinal of IESE tournament. Some minutes before the game it was sunny, then it rained a bit and then, well, the weather was really strange but perfect to take some pics. Here Paul, myself with my NASA jacket, and the rainbow.

Saturday game and lunch.

No futbol for Sunday, only a concert this morning (Michel Camilo: Rhapsody in blue), and a nice siesta. A nice and loooong siesta.

2 weeks to go!

2007-03-19T10:10:00.000+01:00

In about 15 days we will be ex-MBA students. Very strange feeling when I think about it. Since 2 weeks is not a lot of time, especially if we take into consideration that time seems to go much faster than its usual speed (this is a strange phenomena during this second year of school), everybody at IESE is trying to enjoy as much as possible the fact that we will be "alumni" very soon. Class of 2007 dinner. (The specialty of the place, “frozen spring rolls”, were an absolute hit).

10% of the 2007 Female graduates

One of the lasts BOWs at LaFira. Columpiándome con Anosha

We have become quite addicted to games lately, especially when there are some drinks around. The ultrafamous and international game "Los chinos" was the game of the weekend. Starting in the class dinner. 3 coins per person. Right guess of number of coins, you don't drink (a condition is to NOT celebrate you guessed right. If you celebrate you are in again (This is the most dificult part of the game. Everybody likes celebrating!!). Wrong guess, you are in until there is only one person left. If you are that person you just have to drink a glass of something. Beer is preferable to any Croatian or Estern-Europe-distilled-uncolored-drink.

See, here Pablo has to drink. Tom is containing the celebration euophoria...

Satuday night we had a Party at Harry and Elif's place in Gracia. I stopped at Mark and Ian's place before.

Marc: I forgot to buy some beer for the party, we should stop at a Paki shop before.

Mark: Yes, we need beer. And food.

Marc: Beer, yes, so we can play "chinos"...

Mark: So we can stay in a corner playing drinking games with coins and not speaking to anyone.
Marc: Yes!

Ian: I am curious about our conversations in 10 years time when we see each other again...Btw I will be completely bald by then...

Marc&Mark: Maybe

Saturday morning futbol & apperitive under the sun.

Waiter practicing. Who knows. Better to be skilled just in case....

SpringFling weekend

2007-03-13T19:24:00.000+01:00

This is the official logo of some "quality time". Last week we discussed the meaning of "quality time" in a class. One of the definitions reads that is the time that you don't forget for various reasons. One of them could be because you can associate it with a special moment that makes you think about the meaning of life and your purpose in this world. Well, for today, we take the definition that reads that "quality time" is (appart from all that), the time you really enjoy. Before the activity, while you are waiting for it, during the event itself, and after it, when you remember it with your friends. So in conclusion, this weekend we have had some quality time!

The Spring Fling is an event that some students from IESE organize to have two parties and one Saturday full of sports competition under an amazing weather in Marchwith, inviting other business schools from around Europe. This year we have had as guests the London Business School (aka LBS aka “los que van a palmar en las olimpiadas de Mayo”), ESADE, IE, INSEAD and Bocconi. Thanks to all of you for participating!!!

The event kicked off on Friday, with a party that I organized myself and that it was one of the best parties I have had since I am at IESE. Not so much because of the organizer, but because of the place and environment with everybody starting the weekend in a very good way.

I think this was quite late at night, with George, Marco and Huy. One very important recomendation if you are thinking of being part of some Spring Fling commitee at some point in your life: Sleep more than 2 hours if the next day you have to be at 8:30 in the morning ready to walk, run, shout and laugh non-stop for 12 hours.

Saturday: Weather was.....according to the event. INEFC facilities at Montjiuich

Jon Ander. A human machine that has worked much more than the rest of the organizers to make the event possible. Gracias Jon! Lo celebramos la semana que viene!!

As you can see, organizers also play sports. IESE kicked ass in most of the sports, including Basket! Here the winners of the basketball championship. We beat IESE favorite team (with some help of physical injuries and an awesome referee aka Juha) and then ESADE in the final. Thanks Kamil, Freddy, Ben, Diego, Thanos, Pablo Royo (not in the pic), and our girls Anna and Cristina. I think we deserved it!!! Olé!!

Then we finished the weekend altogether the 400 of us in a party (of course) after the Barça-Madrid game. And esto es todo amigos! Hope to see you all in the next Spring Fling, and the best for next year organizers!

Sunday I could not considered myself a human being so I decided to just sleep and watch a couple of movies. For 10th time in my life or so, I chosed "Gladiator" to finish the weekend. I think is definetely the movie that I have seen most times, and I still really like it (my mother does the same with Pretty Woman). Anyway, this post is finished.

And now....... We need you for the Olympics!! Sign up you lazy guy!!

de capa caida

2007-03-07T02:25:00.000+01:00

When you walk through a storm

Hold your head up high

And don't be afraid of the dark

At the end of the storm

Is a golden sky

And the sweet silver song of a lark

Walk on through the wind

Walk on through the rain

Tho' your dreams be tossed and blown

Walk on, walk on

With hope in your heart

And you'll never walk alone

You'll never walk alone

FORÇA BARÇA

Al menos murieron con las botas puestas

ENTJ or a random week between Feb and March

2007-03-04T11:24:00.000+01:00

This week, among other things, I have been labeled as an ENTJ. This means that according to the work of a psychiatrist called Carl Gustav Jung, I am a "Dominant Extraverted Thinking supported by Introverted iNtuition" kind of person. Cool eh! I will use this as an introductory sentence to certain people from now on during a certain period of time and will publish the results of my introductory sentence in the blog. Eg: So tell me a bit about yourself...what do you do? Oh, I am a dominant extraverted thinking person that supports himself by introverted intuition, but only sometimes. Clear eh!
Apparently, Jung didn't like too much our inclination towards science and logic, and he wanted to increase our attention towards spirituality and the unconscious realm. He investigated the world of dream, myth, and soul. By the way, if someone can explain briefly to me how can you investigate the soul, please, feel free to post a comment. About the unconscious part, it sounds a bit like X-men vocabulary, but I have to admitt that the personalities described in that test match quite a lot with how one thinks about himself, and it is quite useful for.....Job interviews.

Yes, interviews are still "in process", of course. I am becoming an expert. Lamberto gave me the idea of beating the number of interviews an IESE MBA has done in one term. That would be a way to be remembered at school, although the idea is not very appealing to me for the moment. (Of course, I am exaggerating a bit and there is people who has done a lot more interviews. Still, if one week I don't have an interview now, I feel empty :-). The best thing of doing this interview processes is that it gives you the opportunity of knowing more people and also thinking about yourself quite a lot. Lately, my interest has shifted towards the very interesting and always entertaining world of "assessment centers and group dynamics". Real fun.
Anyway, once the idea of applying the concept of the movie "Wedding crashers" into "Assessment center crashers" (just to have something tangible once you finish) was discarded for its stupidity and its implication of attending to even more assessment centers, the main objective is still finding a job soon.

Week activities:
Freddy's surprise party at Iñigo's place. It was a second multicultural dinner (see prev post), not so for the amount of booze (although the Germans pushed in that direction), but for the variety of food from every country present in the diner. Below, the preparation of festivities.

Left table was mainly occupied with Spanish food in the beggining. Lena and Till.
I hypnotized Chris with my camera flash.

Iñigo, the host. This is the MBA 2007 class president, and believe me, a future famous teacher at the school. The other is me.

Thursday: Random dinner. Mexican food in Tammy Maloney's place cooked by Goomer. The company and the food were delicious, just as the old tequila we enjoyed at the end. Unfortunately, I had to leave soon due to.....a friday and saturday interviews. Oh yeah!!
Here the random dinner crowd with Yevgeny, an infiltrated Russian who was wearing a Mexican hat for migits.

Enjoy!

Multicultural megaparty

2007-02-25T23:09:00.000+01:00

There is one common thing to all cutures in the world, or at least to all cultures that you can find among the sample of population called MBAs, and more concretely, among the MBAs in Barcelona some random friday of February 2007. The IESE multicultural dinner is definetely and without a doubt, an awesome party, and a very good way of expanding your knowledge about food and drinks from other parts of the world, especially drinks. Ah, the common thing is...well, you can guess what it is. Some multicultural conclusions:
Beer is still without a doubt the common drink to most of the cultures in this planet.
Japanese and Indian food are the most internationally accepted foods.
Spanish stand rocks year after year, although the temperature was tooo high there. We were very well accompained by our friends the Portuguese.
Latin American and Nordic countries drinks are dangerous, very dangerous....
I ate too much junk food from the American stand when there was no more sushi left. Service is always very good in the US stand.

Mariachis are the best way to encourage people to sing.

Brits. The paint-drinking contest. When I left the winner was about 4 seconds. Sir Harry, the ambassador and referee of the contest.

Italians decided it was time to celebrate again their deserved world cup. I understand looking at this picture can damage your eyes up to same amount as watching catenaccio. Ok ok, at least they have some world cups. Us spanish....zero patatero. Oh, btw, I have to say that this year Polish pasta was better than Italian pasta.

Me and a crazy american guy that wanted to exchange his baseball clothing for my toro t-shirt at any price. Of course I said no way. He understood.

Argentina-Italia with un servidor

I really liked the german stand. Friendly people, cosy, and always with a good beer and some jagermeister ready. Here Tom (with an awful t-shirt) infiltrated in the bratswurt crowd.

Here 3 beautiful German girls (2 blondes, one very suspicious, and one non-blonde)

The truth is that the most beautiful girls were, without a doubt, the Dutch girls

Reds. Mark and Atsh. Here Mark wearing same awful red t-shirt as his flatmate Tom in the pic above.

Typical spanish. Sandra, Nuria and Alvaro el bombero torero.

The party goes on

Dutch animal Robain with Japanese friends

Rafael el luchador mexicano. And then the mariachis came, and then.....ay ay ay ay canta y no llores, por que cantando se alegra el cielito lindo, y los corazoooooooneeeeees!!!!!!!!

ski trip 2007 and how to reach guten tag! rhine

2007-02-13T21:56:00.000+01:00

If you want to have access to my writings from google, you can just type in the white box any of these things, and Guetn Tag! Rhine will appear in results. At least that is what some of the last 100 viewers did. I will start a contest right now, we will call it "best google types to reach guten tag rhine" Here the first champions:

1) "How do you pronounce the city of Basel" (in mandarin or in swiss-german?)
2) "Swimmers suecas" (great combination)
3) "El hombre domado" (no coment on this one)
4) "Finnland quiet" (contestant number 4, this doesn't exist)
5) "Challenging but achievable" (awesome, what were you looking for contestant 5?)
6) "sex + nepal" (no coment also...wait...Pradeep you have my link, no need to google my blog)
7) "Undressed girls" (that was myself)
8) "Article drogadicts" (I am starting to think there is something wrong with my blog)
9) "After IESE MBA" (Still no idea)

And the winner is....
10) "yo tube paco another life" (yo también tube a Paco en otra life, pero al final se me escapó, y ya no lo tuVe más)

SKIESE 2007: My friend 307 did a good job once again to bring Lena, Mark, Tom, and the other Marc to Andorra. Then, good friends, good snow, good drinks, more drinks, once more, another time, good music and good traffic jam.

Me and Tom aka Dj.Isley.
My understanding of british pronunciation stays the same as last friday afternoon after this weekend, although Tom and Mark did their best in my car to help me with this issue.

Pre-lunch walk in Pessons. From this point on we followed the norwegian taste for good food but especially for good drinks. And we were good followers.

Apres-ski. If you put together the Norwegian taste we mentioned before with an english drinking game (and the english themselves), plus some latinos with kind of same norwegian taste, you get this picture.

Saturday night was long, but 9 in the morning we were active again. Snow was ready. But....where is Mr.Templeman in this pic below?? He should be in the left!!!!! Once more, never, ever, ask someone to take a pic of a group if he doesn't look at least like a professional phototgrapher. Anyway, part of the skiing group:

Do not worry, I captured Mark a bit later. Oh yes, I captured him, with the megastar Pablo Royo. Good outfits, good guys.

Interviews in progress....?.....?

2007-02-07T21:15:00.000+01:00

This blog is considered inactive until next week. Two reasons:

The first one is the IESE ski trip this weekend, although in order to be fair, and considering the expected amount of snow in Andorra, instead of a ski trip we can call it just "a trip".

The second reason is job interview preparation, a very exciting and time-consuming activity (or time-wasting depending on the outcome).

I guess that interviewing with companies is a bit like trying to find a girlfriend. At the end, we (men) never chose the woman. The most we can do is to offer them the opportunity to know us, the opportunity that they chose us.

positive externalities of smoking

2007-02-01T18:25:00.000+01:00

1st of February. I have been officially one month without smoking. Well, ok ok, this sentence is not 100% true. If we take into consideration the various tentatives that I have done under the effects of some alcohol, music, and night conversations....I have smoked almost one cigarrete in total (or maybe 2, the details are not important, you have to look at the big picture). Thanks to the people who didn't allow me to go further in those dangerous 30 seconds of craving. Anyway, I am happy, I am doing this for myself and really, I feel much better. However, let me tell you that my decision of giving up smoking is not contributing at all (contrary to what you may think) to the welfare of my country and the society in general. Let me explain.

This week I read an article about a study done in the Czech Republic some years ago by a prestigeous consulting company, about the positive effects for the society in general (economic effects) that smoking has. Yes, according to the study, which you can read HERE, smoking produces what we call a positive externality for the society. In a nutshell, the fact that smokers basically die younger, together with the considerable taxes that they pay to the government during their smoking lives, more than counter the effects of helathcare costs and other annoyances that you may attribute as negative (costs) to the society. They provide numbers if you want to check it.

In conclusion, next time you see a person smoking in the street, just stop in front fo him, and with a big smile, just say....thank you smokers of the world, to make a richer and a more prosperous country to live in. Because I don't consider myself a very altruistic person by definition, I think I will continue without smoking for the moment.

PS: For the ones interested, there are some arguable things in the article of course, but that is another story ;)

End of weekend, put a Clint Hasselhoff in your life

2007-01-29T08:56:00.000+01:00

I have always had problems in identifying my "favourite" in different things. Usually, you are supposed to have a favourite paintor, a favourite actor, a favourite writer...At least that is what they ask when you have to fill your profile everywhere. For example, a favourite music group: When? in which context? classic music? techno? jazz? Of course, the answer is "it depends". Well, in movies however, I would say that I have a kind of favourite, and that would be Mr.Clint Eastwood. Yesterday I went to see "Flags of our fathers". Of course, very good. Go see it!

And then we have another category of favourites. This guy below can't compete with Clint Eastwood, and my friend Clint probably sings better than him. However, there is space for everyone in the word of favourites, so you can segment them according to the level of seriousness for example (yes I am becomming addicted to one of our marketing courses). ok ok I can give an example of favourites segmentation. I have spent quite a lot of time in my life (that was some years ago) watching this man in the TV. When you see something like this and you don't close your browser after 10 seconds, that is because you are watching what we can call "a classic". David Hasselhoff... a. w. e. s. o. m. e. Another of my favourites:

Special charity dinner. 1st year girls rock

2007-01-26T00:12:00.000+01:00

On thanksgiving dinner at IESE, there is a tradition: A group of first year girls offer a dinner for a group of second year guys that are wiling to pay a considerable amount of money to enjoy the dinner and "network" with those first years. Two factors play in favour of the charity fundraising: Some people get quite loaded in the summer internship and they have to invest the money somwhere (I have always said that good food and good companion is a very good way to spend money, not to say if in top of that you are helping a good cause). Thank you Francis for bidding and winning this unforgettable dinner.

This is what we received before the party: Quite scaring.

Since the times of Venus (or Aphrodite, you choose), the world would be safer if women took more control over it. There would be less wars, since they know how to calm down the situation and be more rational than men. They know how to communicate better and thus it is (usually) easier for them to make themselves understand and explain the situation. Since the times of Venus, they know the control they are able to exercise over people from the other sex. In general, we are always willing to have dinner and other interesting things with them (go travel and have nice chat I mean), especially if there are a agroup of 20!!!

Each of us had a host that took care of everything (Thank you Iris, you are the best!), food and drinks served. Awesome food, and awesome company.

Here the group enjoying the last part of the dinner. You might say, well, I see no girls here....

The thing is girls were decided to start their party at that moment, and they were having a short meeting on the other side of the living room, and when I say their party I mean that we did everything they said, played the games they wanted, dance the music they wanted.....And we loved it!

Strawberries with hot chocolate, perfect for some incriminating pictures that I will use in the future when my friends are VPs of investment banks in case I lose my job and have some economic roblems. For the time being, that is not necessary yet. Here Juha and Mark enjoying Nani's desert.

Well, I also enjoyed the strawberries with chocolat thanks to my beloved host.

Pasion latina. There is no girl that resists Gustavo's dancing

Men Drinking......more men drinking.....The feminie control is reaching its peak.

Now its turn to stay in our knees.

Well, after that, the next order was "shirts out", so after staying in our knees waiting for the music to stop in order to receive the impact of a girl jumping in search of one free back, we had to take our shirts out of course, literally. No pics of that phase of the night, sorry. The thing is, even the most virile man has in his interior some kind of propensity to dress as a girl, and when you start to undress in front of 20 more guys (without any girl being undressed), well, hidden personalities came out in the most natural way: Here the femenine power and control has already reached its peak some time ago, and from that point on you are just as a doll, an object that obeys to a woman's voice. Still, you really like it.

They can even make men pray for more of that party, fo a bit more of stravaganza...

But everything has an end right? So we can say that at some point, we have enjoyed and unforgettable dinner, we have eaten the most delicious food, drink the most sparkling champagne, tasted the most hot chocolate, danced even some regeton......But at the end we have given some good money to charity. It is time to take our part of the dinner, right Mark?

Thank you all first years for an awesome night!!! We promise to give back this dinner to you.

The birth of Venus (Botticelli). The classical Goddess Venus emerges from the water on a shell. Here we go!

but why?

2007-01-23T00:20:00.000+01:00

Sometimes, there is a point when you don't know if you've done the right thing or the worse thing possible. There is a point where it doesn't really matter anymore. Maybe, if you look back, you would have probably done the same thing, because you would have been the same person and there is no possible look into the future (that is the nice thing in fact). So I guess it is useless to think if you could have changed something or not. Things end up in some way and we have to deal with it. When you are not aligned with something (one), well, you can end up pretty bad if you think you are. It is too sad. Verdad sylvestre?

From this blog, I would like to thank Mr.King George for his contribution to the Spanish GDP in the form of bills to the police and parking fees. Thank you so much George, this nation owes you. My grand children will remember your contributions to their education system (oh, sorry, we won't have that anymore in some years here). Anyway, George's post and a short conversation today with a first year italian girl Silvia (By the way, we will give details about an awesome dinner with the first years later this week), have made me remember that, in fact, my time in Italy as an erasmus student (and 140 more spanish students in Pisa during 2000) did not help a lot to the Italian economy. I think we created a big gap in GDP that year:

Ma qui dobbiamo pagare per prendere il bus???

I know some people that practiced the archifamous spanish "botellon" for free the whole year with the courtesi of "Coop" and some local shops.

Supply of bicicles without locker was amazing in toscana at that time.

And in some police station close to Bologna there is a paper signed with the names of 4 spanish actors claiming for a stolen bag that contained 4 train tickets (andata e ritorno).

Well, those were other times. I have seen that the Italian erasmus crowd in Barcelona usually create the same gap we were creating at that time. Mmmmm, this counterbalances so maybe George's argument is correct. Yes, those were other times. I remember a taxi driver doing half of the traject from the airport to my place (Pisa is quite small) in the wrong direction and saying "non ti preocupare ragazzo". I didn't have a clue about economics at that time (same as now), but my subconscious was saying that he may wanted to reduce his savings and improve the Italian economy (nothing happened to him).

George, Police here know who to screw. Who do you think I am calling every time you see me on the phone at night, some girl? C o m i s s i o n

Challenging but achievable

2007-01-17T09:27:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I read an interesting thing about "supply and demand". Back in 1990, an imaginative guy called Julius Lowenthal did a very interesting experiment that I am going to explain. By the way, according to wikipedia, Julius Lowenthal it is also te name of a company that manufactures high-end cigarette lighters and other luxury gift items....such as the Golden Gun that appears in the James Bond film "The man with a golden gun". Do not confuse with The man with the golden finger, or goldfinger, or with the man with the golden eye, or goldeneye) We will go back to james bond later, lets focus now.

Mr. Lowenthal wanted to explore the supply of "check cashing", so he sent checks of $1.11 to 58 of the wealthiest Americans, including entertainers, entrepreneurs, sports figures, writers, politicians...There are rich people in almost every profession you know. Of the 58, there were 26 who took the trouble to cash the check. These 26 were then sent checks for $0.64. Now only 13 cashed their checks. Each of these 13 was sent a final check for $0.13 and only two guys cashed that check. Their names are Donald Trump and Adnan Kashoggi.

My idea is that they sent some poor guy to the bank to cash it, but it is also true that those guys love every cent they can earn probably a bit more than what is normal (that is one reason they have become quite rich). I argued with my Grandmother not long time ago because she tried (and managed) to pick a 5 cents coin from the floor in the street during a painful couple of minutes, risking her back and having a bad afternoon without being able to stand up properly. I am sure Donald Trump would have helped her (and probably run away with the coin!). If you are thinking I am an asshole because I did not helped her, I was at some distance and when I realized (promise) I just had time to shout: please, die another day!

The other guy who increased his wealth by $0.13 was Adnan Kashoggi (and now we close the circle of connections), whose sister was the mother of Dodi Al-Fayed, Diana's...(I love wikipedia). Ok, it turn out that this man had a kind of crazy money-spending life, commemorated in Queen's album The Miracle, on which the second song is titled "Khashoggi's Ship", for his super yatch "Nabila". A very good place to enjoy or live the daylights. Just this small boat you can see below.

Do you know who bought the yatch at the end after it was bought and sold couple of times in a quasi-all debt operation and $0.13 of free cash?? Yes, you are right, it was Donald Trump!! The world is not enough....big.

The best is that the yatch appeared in a James Bond film (Never say never again). It is a shame that the film was not The man with a golden gun. That would have been really a signal to Mr. Julius Lowenthal, the inspirer of this post.

This short story tells us that when the reward for something is small, relatively few people take the effort of going for it.

Another input from class yesterday, related in some way with supply and demand, is that thanks to Salvatore, we could hear a couple of adjectives to decide how to set some objectives for yourself or for someone else. "as we used to say in my company", an objective has to be...Challenging but achievable.
I think this can be applied to almost everything we should go for, not only in the professional life, but also in our private life. In fact, that is what everybody likes, something that is too easy to get is not so attractive to our eyes. The best example is with (como no) men and women realtionships (Although I think it is more applicable to women). We may go for something challenging, but of course, if it is not achievable....well....there is a sentence that says that seduction starts with a "no" but I am not very sure about that. Depends which kind of no.

To finish the post I think it is fair to go back to James Bond (James Bond girls I mean). Good example of challenging but achievable? It is curious that since "Dr.No" they haven't been able to find such a good James Bond (Sean Connery), and such a good James Bond girl (Ms. Andress).

Readers, For your eyes only:

The king at school

2007-01-14T11:57:00.000+01:00

The other day I saw the king of Spain in person for the first time. Nothing has changed in my life, and I did not go to any event as a fan of the kings to shout "JuanCarlos y Sofía, os queremos!!" That was not the case. They came to IESE for the innauguration of the new building and we had the "opportunity" to wait standing up for around half an hour under the sun while everybody else (hundreds of alumni, politicians, professors, and other powerful people I guess) was enjoying a good cocktail. During the waiting time, the waiters were literaly attacked by a crowd of starving MBA students in their way to the cocktail room. Fortunately for the people inside the building, IESE allocated a team of 2 extra-waiters in order to protect the food and the champagne (sorry, cava I mean) from us. After a long waiting time, the kings came, they were 30 seconds in front of the group for the official picture with MBA students that you can see in the king's blog, and they left. Then we decide that it was time to eat real stuff instead of trying to steal more small pieces of food.

Here you can see the students with the king, just in the moment when a spontaneous person was mooning from a window in front of the group. Our king has a great sense of humour.

In the evening news I saw the king having lunch same day in Madrid with some politicians, and at 2pm he was in Barcelona with us, no wonder he left so fast!

For me, the most curious thing from the event, that by the way we students could follow only from a high-technology classroom, was the speech of the Associate Dean of Harvard Business School. He emphasized the reationship between HBS and IESE, and then he said that the year our king studied there was very important for HBS because they graduated two kings that year, the king of spain, and the king of swing: Benny Goodman. I don't know what to think about this sentence. I found it funny at beggining, but sincerely, I think it is not really appropriate, although I have a lot of respect for the king of soul. And now that I think about it, because of that sentence I have been listening a bit of Benny Goodman this week. At least Benny Goodman has some glamour and well, can be used in the sentence I guess, imagine that in 20 years they say to the future king that they were very proud that year because they graduated two kings, the king of spain and the king of pop, Michael jackson. I can't imagine Michael at HBS graduation ceremony. Same for other kings of music.... (sorry I had to include M.Jackson in this post somehow).

Here Benny, the good man. I like this surname. Is there someone called Badman also?

What else, my smoking tendencies are under control. It has been some time since I was a smoker and actually I feel pretty good, very good. I am happy I haven't smoked. However, I have to say that if in 15 or 30 days I have the same sensations when I think about smoking a cigarrete while enjoying a beer at night with friends...I may go back!! Seriously, this 2 or 3 minutes of craving are quite bad. But we will resist!!! The only problm that ceasing tobacco has caused in my life is that nerves are pretty altered in my family lately. My father took the same decision this new years eve, so now, the two of us combined have stooped to consume around 500 cigarretes per week. A direct consequence of that is that at some random time during the day it is better not to even talk at home. When the nicotinic receptors in your brain cells stop receiving the positive input of some mg of that substance every ertain period of time, well, some effect can be noticed, and mine is quite small compared with my father. However, my mother is so happy that we are a healthy non-smoking family now that counteracts all the negative energy that can come from the drug-addict behavior.

The grumpy dwarf is a good example of a recent ex-smoker after having his after-lunch coffee. There is also a personality theory that associates you with one of the seven dwarfs (and you have the same one either you smoke or not). I may be the grumpy dwarf.....or not. Not losing time now to figure it out. I know myself pretty good.

good and bad

2007-01-09T09:04:00.000+01:00

There is a lot of people looking for appartments, spare rooms and other kinds of spaces to stay in Barcelona during this 2007. To those who have already found something, and to those who are still on the process of finding someting in this cheap city to rent a place, please, be aware of cats! (video from lari&gafa).

CATPHOBIC

Here other good and bad things that can happen to you this year appart from having a thief-cat. I just received a 2007 calendar with this inscriptions. I am not sure any of these an be applicable to me, especially because of the kids issue, but in any case I would agree on the good-bad definitions.

Good: Your kid is not going out from her room because of studying
Bad: There are lots of porn videos in her room
Very bad: you are on the videos

Good: Your boyfriend likes your underwear
Bad: He is using it
Very bad: It suits him better than you
(This I write it in femenine because every men underwear suits better in girls body that in a mans body)

Good: You are giving sexual lessons to your daughter
Bad: She is interrupting you constantly
Very bad: Correcting you

Good: Yor daughter has a job at last
Bad: She is a whore
Very bad: Your friends are clients
Fucked: She earns much more than you do

Memories from Lapland, hello 2007

2007-01-05T20:14:00.000+01:00

Hello to everybody, or the very few readers that this blog still has. Actually, since everybody thinks this blog is dead, this is now a phantom blog. I wanted to write the epitaph for the blog to start the 2007 without having to think about blogger.com anymore. However, I had good times during the summer writing here, so I have decided not to kill the blog definetely. It will continue being a phantom blog for the moment. It has been a bit since my last post because I didn't have time to enjoy the last version of blgger.com, which by the way, it does not cause me the image uploading nightmares I had this summer. Anyway you don't care about this... I think I will update the blog maybe every 1st of january, or every month, or.....

2007

Things that I want to do:
1)Find a good job (this is more than prioritary in my life).
2)Find a job that I really like (I guess this is the same as point 1 right?)
4)This is not a prioritary issue but it would be nice to have more stability in my relationships with the opposite sex than in 2006. Last part of 2006 has been a bit too crazy for various reasons......although I think in general I can't complain, well, if not for...ok next number,
5)Lets stop finding things for this year....so the next one is having more fun than in 2006. This is a wish that I have every year. However, you can't have steadily more fun forever. This is not possible. Standard deviation is everywhere, and in the long term I think no one has managed to improve her fun every year, otherwise you would die from an laughing attack after 40 or 50 years of continuous fun-improvement. Aaaanndd,I do not like having fun all the time. I also enjoy the serious and quiet moments, and sadness is also part of our life, which makes the fun moments even better right?. Ok, just the minimum sadness for this year so that it can be considered a fun-improvement year.
6)Health for my family (this is a permanent one and number 6 is symbolic). Considering our recent years I think this will be pretty easy to achieve in 2007
7)Give up smoking. You may think I am the guy with less credibilty in the world. Well, let me tell you I have been 6 days without smoking since new years eve, and (this is true), since I consider myself as a smoker, never achieved that before. Ladies and Gentleman, I am commited now......commited to see if I can manage to continue not smoing I mean.
8)Winning the MBA Olympics. I think we can altogether make this one possible. I was going to say finish the MBA succesfully but I think I am veeeery close to that and can be considered almost done.
9)Repeat an amazing trip next new years eve just like the one I had this year to northern Finland!!! I hope I can do a trip like this one next year. If it is in a beach location I would not mind also, although my love for the white powder is confirmed and increased after being in Lapland. I would be more than happy to tell my grandchildren that during 2007 I changed my addiction from niccotine to snow. That, in fact, makes sense.
10)Point 10 is hat you readers of this blog have an awesome 2007 as well.

LAPLAND WAS AMAZING. The trip to Finland and the polar circle has been one of the best trips of my life I think. We went there to Juha's place, a Finnish friend from the MBA, and more than 20 of us slept in his amazing wooden house close to a town called Akaslompolo, around 5 hours distance inside the arctic circle. From the trip, lots of activities: snowmobiling, cross-coutry skiing, snow walking in a lake and a mountain, sledge downhill races, good time with good friends, reindeer riding (I mean that someone ride a reindeer while I was lying in a sledge with a finnish girl ;) That is the finnish version of the venice gondolas I guess. Very romantic if not for the fact that reindeers are a bit smelly animals, it is too cold, and you see the back of the animal all the time. However, absolutely worth it).

Ohh, and another unforgettable thing were the sauna conversations with cold beers, and the snow bath in the cold snow before comming back inside the sauna for another beer at 100ºC. That is basically a short run you do naked straight from the sauna outside the house to jump into the snow, then you turn fast to put your ass in the cold white as well, and then you run into the house again because you don't want your intimate parts to freeze too much. The number of beers you drink inside the saune increase your resistance time in this activity. However, mediterranean people, please, do not try to compete in this activity with our northern friends (in both the beer and the sauna-snow taking), otherwise you can notice a kind of dizziness during both activities. Same advice applies for peole from Nepal (right Pradeep?)

So thank you Juha for making that trip possible and to all of you that came to Finland to enjoy the transition to what it will be a very good 2007. I am sure it will be a good year, we have the blessing of the lapland spirits for that.
Good bye and an awesome new year to everyone!!!

Here the trouppe ready to experience a bit of polar circle before visiting Santa Clause house (a pretty good marketing house with few bottlenecks in the money colecting process)

Forget about swiss-german....Sunni is sooooo complicated.....

mornig walk. George and Annastina.

In Santa Clause home. Huy, Noelle and un servidor.

Walking in the snow

Fernando alonso....who?

after being blessed by lapland spirits.

Sauna time......oh yeah!

Having fun in the morning, or midday, well, you can't really guess from the light, believe me.

Knight riders Marc and George (con la moto fantástica)

Cross-country ski. We had a really good local teacher. I tried to follow la femme fatale along the route but she was quite fast in front of me all the time. By the way, cross-country ski is a very complete sport, more than I thought.

Me in the lake

Helsinki. Last day in Finland. Then I took a couple of flights to Barcelona with Noelle. One of these two options is possible: either the bus driver to our lufthansa flight was driving in circles or Frankfurt airport is the biggest in the world. well, maybe none of them is the right option, but that was a long ride to a plane.
Mañana vienen los reyes magos.........a ver a ver. Yo creo que este año me he portado bien, aunque ya tengo lo que había pedido....quien sabe....Habrá que ir a dormir temprano....ehemm

Au revoir Basel

2006-09-22T22:57:00.000+02:00

Time flies! this is always true, especially when you have a good time, and to be fair, I think I have had a good time in Basel. Even when taking into consideration the long hours in front of hundreds of excel files, the uncertainty about how was all work going to be at the end, and some headaches because of the microclima that this region of Switzerland seems to have, I can say once more that "time flies", and my time in Basel this summer has come to its end.

Below, my last dinner in Basel, before all the people you can see in the picture bacame incapable of walking due to the ammount of very good pizza we had in our stomachs. Andreas, thank you for the fantastic Basel map you draw in June. Especially for your selection of bars and restaurants.
After dinner, the remainig components of a BOW that will continue even without interns during the year, decided to go to Bar Rouge for the last gin&tonic in Basel, a bar in the 31st floor of the highest building in Switzerland (yeah, switzerland is not precisely "the place" if what you are looking for is just high buildings). In our way there, and giving that the weather has decided to be good again just when I leave, we walk in front of some men enjoying strett chess.
Bar Rouge. This place is really good (except for the price). The bar is well decorated, the music is good, and when you go up in the elevator it looks like you ar going to hell, but instead of doing that way down under the earth, you take the elvator up.
The only thing is that considering the nice night views you have from the whole city once there, there is usually not a lot of people, the people who is there are not in a very daniong mood, and do not know why but I have reached the conclusion that the place is cursed. This is the only explanation that I can think of, because this bar would be absolutely crowded everyday in any other city.
Well, that is more or less everyting I guess. I will miss some things from Switzerland: the weekend trips, the mountains, the friends I leave here (including Germany), the swimming in the Rhine, my runnings following the river, some beers in the park close to my place, our summer BOWs, the crazy nights in Zurich and the people with whom I have been there, the morning coffees with Ignacio in our smoking turkish bar close to Novartis, the afternoon cigarrete with Paco to talk about how things are going on in cardiovascular marketing, and many other things which, if mentioned all, will make you change url very fast.
On the other side, I am glad to come back to my city, Barcelona, a place with a much more stable mediterranian weather, and to leave some things I won't miss: Having one of my fingers white every time I try to open the cream for my expresso, or to be unable to speak a word of german (or should I better say to not be able to pronounce any sound that sound like german), and some peculiarities which I can't really understand. For example, why you can take your litter out only on mondays and thursdays in Basel? What happens if I decide to invite 10 people to my micro-apartment for a friday dinner consisting of...smelly fish? and many other things that, if mentioned all, will make you change url very fast. Ahh, another thing that I won't miss for sure is the conversation I will have tomorrow morning with the easyjet person in charge of weighting my luggage.

So I guess this is the end of this short-life blog. Many people have asked me to keep the blog going. Apreciate. I am not sure about this. In spanish we say "lo bueno, si breve, dos veces bueno". So I guess is better to close this now that it has accomplished the purpose for which was created. Now we have to move on and finish the MBA. Time to think again about how is going to be the incomming year (well, we are not in 2007 but you know, I am still working with school calendars, so for me tomorrow starts a new year). I think I have three main objectives for the year. One is to find a good job, and one that I really like. The other is to spend a good time with all my friends from IESE (this includes winning the Olympics) and the rest of my people in Barcelona. And the third one, well, that one is not of your business.

If I remember well, this is the first pic I took in July just arrived from the airport. We can repeat the pic as a sunny melancolic image of the beggining of my internship. At that time I didn't know if it was going to be good or bad, but with that pic as the first one, I should have known already at that time that is was going to be a good summer.

I think this is the view that I have seen more times in Basel, both in my way to work and in the afternoon in my way back home. Look at the sky: do you think is going to rain or not? Difficult eh!!
I steal a pic from josh as the leaving pic.

ok, we are ready to leave now. Good bye Basel! Good bye rhine!

Music for today: Fugees - Ready or not

Journalism

2006-09-20T09:27:00.000+02:00

Wednesday. Three days to leave Switzerland. I am happy and sad at the same. After spending half of my nights here watching Tv series like 24 or Lost, I have a new distraction, but this time in the mornings: The semi-overweight-latin-american woman that presents the weather forecast every morning around 7:30 in CNN. Lets rephrase that. The distraction is not exactly her, but to see how the weather will be in different parts of the world. One month ago, while eating my morning muesli, I would just turn into any newspapers or the computer screen when I saw the ususal typhoon or tornado going on in Asia. Now I am paying attention to that. And I like it! This is bizarre! Its something like a hidden hobbie. Have you seen the movie "demolition man"? I think is in that movie that Silvester Stallone discovers that his hidden hobbie is to make wool clothes manually (again, sorry for my poor english, there must be a verb for this). Maybe mine is to watch weather forecasts. I am exagerating again, lets change topic.

Paco reccomended me a very short marketing book some weeks ago. This summer I have also been doing some of the reading I couldn't do during our busy first year of MBA. sincerely, I prefer good literature rather than these boring business books but anyway. I was curious yesterday about one of the questions of the book to show that we always keep in much more in mind (and thus make it more succesful) the first brand that enters in the market, not the second. Then the book asks who is the second president of the USA (if you are not from the states this question is not easy :). Then I googled that and found the name of John Adams, and after that I read a good sentence by that man that I copy here just to "inflate" this post:
" I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture, inorder to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain".

Well this post seems a bit short, and there are no pics in it, so I have decided to show the insights of the blog, so you can see by yourself how I have risked my life and go through the impossible to get you the information about my weekend trips, boring stories and other things.

Marc taking pics to post pics: This is in Dusseldorf, in avery very dangerous neighborhood as you can perfectly recognize. I am very proud of this pic
This one....I have no idea what I was doing when Marek took me this picture, but it looks I was again taking risks at night in a very uncomfortable position so that you could have first hand info about Germany.
Tourist photo in Zurich. This is always risky, we don't want the family to have a remembering of the city that everytime they look at it makes them talk shit about the guy who took the photo.
There was a frog in front of me in that rock that I was trying to put in front of the sightseeing of Interlaken. Dangerous once more. Forget Australia, tehre are really poisonous frogs in this country....and most of people is not aware of this.
More in Interlaken
Well, this is not a pic of a pic, but you can see how a good journalist goes where the story is, and walks near two drunk women from the mountains dancing like crazy. Really dangerous activity.

The music: Electric Six - Danger! High voltage

Religious partying

2006-09-18T10:36:00.000+02:00

Its been rainig really hard, again, for the last couple of days. My small pfizer umbrella was unable to do its job properly again this morning, and I arrived at the office kinda wet. Once again, it has been confirmed that my thin waterproof jacket is the money better spend by far this summer (together with the weekend trips). I was wondering how is the winter here. Maybe with snow is a different story, but the same rain with 20 degrees (celsious) less could be really........bad. The report of this weekend brings us to the photo above, which is the nornmal aspect of one church in Basel, near the fountains that you see, and near one of my favourites bars in the city (Campari bar) with a nice terrace full of trees where I have had many "reading beers" this summer. Those are the beers you drink while reading a book, which taste a bit different than the ones you drink with friends.
I was having dinner with some friends in an Indian restaurant and we were heading towards a bar when I called Marek, my friend in Dusseldorf, to see if we could see each other for the last time this summer. Marek tells me that he is in a party inside a "charge" (this with a loud surrounding noise that makes impossible for me to understand properly english with german-polish accent). In a "charge"? No idea. Maybe its the name of the party. Next call: I am already in the fountains. Where is the charge? I can't see any charge? Well, basically, please can you tell me where is the party? In the charge. Oh, fine! Then I follow the stream of people and end up in front of the charge. There is a queue to enter inside a church (Ahhhhhhh, the charge!)

I pay 25 francs while asking the woman in the entrance if there is any drink included, and she looks at me saying that the money is for a good cause to help some poor children. The drink included and the good cause are incomaptible I guess. Well, this is for a good cause so I pay the 25 francs quite excited to see what the hell (ups, sorry for the "out of context" expression) is inside the church with flashing lights going out from those big and beautiful windows.

And this is what we find inside the church. Or should I say inside the club? And do not think that the place is a kind of abandoned church. That was a saturday night, so after around 8 hours after we left the Sunday mass was going on in the same place. I was shocked.

Once inside, I ask for a gin & tonic. The waiter tells me that "this looks like a club but is a church, only priests drinks here". Fair enough, two beers please. He did not say that but I guess the explanation is that having hard alcoholic drinks in a church is a bit too much, even if the party is for a good cause.The music, standard rock&roll songs for a high-school party, with some songs from RHCP and other more modern groups, but nothing fancy. I guess is a bit too much for a church to bring a techno or house Dj.

Music for today: New Order - Blue Monday

Last swiss summer saturday

2006-09-16T17:19:00.000+02:00

This is my last saturday in Basel. I guess there will be lots of last things during this last week in Switzerland. Unfortunately, there won't be a last weekend trip, since I am writing this from my appartment in Basel. This implies there would be no post with pics from the mountains this week. Appart from the economic reasons of staying here this weekend, we have also academic reasons. Next week is the deadline for around 8 full-time positions in the healthcare industry for next year, and I should better start writing cover letters like crazy if I do not want to spend my last evenings in Basel closed at home writing why I would love to work for this or that other company, and how I really think I fit into their culture, values.etc etc etc. (I find writing cover letters one of the most boring activities ever, and I have been procrastinating this enough during last week) Now its time to write! The thing is, if you procrastinate the writing of a CL, or any other thing, it means that you are not really anxious for that right? The conclusion for me is that I have decided to apply only to the positions which I really want to be in. I remember I did not procrastinate the essay writing when applying to B-school because I really wanted to go there. ok enough work-related writing.

Yesterday I had diner with Paco at my place and then Josh, Fernanda, and Cythia joined. Both Fernanda and Paco have left already. Myself (together with Ignacio) will be remembered as "the last intern". In this moment I guess Fernanda may be already reading cases for next week in LBS, and Paco in his way to Chicago to join the B-school with the funniest name: Kellogg.

Another thing, if you are a tourist (or just arrived to the city) in Barcelona next weekend, recall that we will be celebrating "LaMerce". the official party of Barcelona. Lots of concerts and activities around the city, plus a music festival that, well, some years its ok and some others not so ok, but always good enough to have fun. Barcelona Accio Musical. I guess I did not mention that before, but unconciously that would be another reason for staying a bit quiet this weekend and save some energy for next saturday and sunday. I have downloaded the poster of "LaMerce" for this year. As always, exteremely awful. With all my respects to the designer of this year, I think there is a conspiration in Barcelona to choose every year the most awful design that they can find, and then use it as a model for the fashion and design that you can find in the city. Well, maybe you like it. I think....ok here is it.

Mmmm, to contradict a bit myself (this is good, sometimes) I would say this year's poster, in fact, is not that bad, I would even say I kinda like it........

Music for today, dedicated to Fernanda (This song with some samba drums in the back):

La vaca es un animal, todo forrado de cueeeeero, todo forrado de cueeeero,

Tiene las patas tan largas, tiene las paaaaaaaaaatas tan laaaaaaaargas,

Que le llegan hasta el sueeeeelo!!!!

One week to go...plus a dinner and a friday

2006-09-14T08:54:00.000+02:00

Yes, only one more week plus two extra days and I will be back in Barcelona. That is the time left until this internship (together with this blog) is decalred officially finished. Last weekend in Madrid has been also "officially declared" something. It has been officially declared "killing weekend", because I feel still not 100% recovered from the wedding and today is wednesday already. Tomorrow we have the goodbye dinner for Ali and Fernanda, and a leaving party on Friday.....oh well....I guess that, as the song says..."I will survive".
An example of our state on Sunday is that I forgot to close my bag with the small locker in the airport, when comming back to Basel. I realized just before the check in, and after half an hour of "pajarreo" looking for the keys I managed to close the bag. Then, two minutes after that, the keys dissapeared. Yes, I swear they dissapeared from my hand or my pocket or wherever. Anyway, I was aware of that once inside the boarding zone. That was after a small incident with the security guy in Madrid´s airport. I thought he was talking in german to me (my mind was already in basel), because he asked to open my arms and turn back for inspection, and I did just the oppposite (I mean that I didn't turn back). Then he was going to proceed and then I realized and turned (remember my arms were opened). Then he looked at me with an expression that we can qualify as bizarre, and I said...Man, I come from a saturady night wedding. No problem.

By the way, given that we are talking about airports, maybe you have time to read this article from "the economist" about the fear of flying. I read it in the plane and I liked it.

Ok, we are now on Monday morning, and the main thing is: Openning the bag. This is going to be very easy. I have my multifunctional "Topeak McGuyver XS" (this is the name written on it) that appart from solving any mountain bike mechanical problem you can have, opens lockers in the blink of an eye. In my case must be in the blink of two milion eyes because the McGyver strategy didn´t work. If you want security mini-lockers....just Samsonite. Then, under the influence of too many movies, I had my bed lamp in my right hand and the bag on the left one, ready to use force with the locker, when I saw myself in the mirrow and start thinking "this is not going to work either and you don´t want to break the bag". Fortunately, I am a creative man and a 10 min walk to the closest department store (where they sell the same samsonite bag) turned out to be better than the movie strategy. Now I know that I can open any samsonite bag that looks the same as mine with my keys, in teh case I have not lost them.

Other things. Yesterday I received in my mail box 2 sets of plastic bags full of indications in german that obviously I can't understand. The bags came together with a booklet to join the swiss police corp. These booklets look the same everywhere, so I am still not very convinced of the advantages of joining. Anyway, going back to the plastic bags, I don't know why but I was convinced they were a very civic initiative so that pet owners can collect the shit of their animals when going out in the street. Maybe they should implement that in Barcelona also, but my opinion is that in my city the problem is not in the "available resources" in the form of plastic bags to collect animals' waste, but in the "available resources" in the brains of some pet owners. So I was curious about the bags and started to look the indications up in my german dictionary (my beloved yellow german dictionary, which is the most unamortised investment I have ever made in a summer period). By looking at the dictionary I start to connect words such as "leather, women, cautious, take care, children, clothes". 2 possible explanations. First: I am not only unable to learn this language but also unable to use a mini-german-spanish yellow dictionary. Second: I don't think the plastic bags are for your dogs' shit. The thing is I still don't know hat are they for. In my case I think I will put some dirty clothes in next week. Maybe they send those bags to any person that has worked in the country and is leaving soon. That would be something like "It has been a pleasure for Basel city to have you in Switzerland, but please, take your thrash home".

I leave you with some pics from tuesday's dinner in the cool appartment that josh has found in the city center. It turned out to be a kind of party, but I was comming from a too hard weekend and left around 11, before things got dangerous agin.

Fernanda unable to decide among the hundreds of things Ali cooked in the afternoonThe music for the evening came from hereMusic for Thursday: Wolf Parade-Grounds for divorce (just to put a little of black humor in this wedding environment we have been experiencing this summer)

Alberto se nos ha casado...parte1

2006-09-11T12:30:00.000+02:00

Por peticion popular este va a ser el unico post en espanol del verano. En espanol cutre hay que decir por que este teclado no tiene ni idea de acentos y menos de la letra N con un garabato encima. (Sorry for those who do not understand but I promised to write this one in Spanish).

Madrid, 8 de Setiembre. Llego al aeropuerto y espero a Queca y David que se debieron creer que me habia equivocado de dia de la boda al verme en traje y corbata (venia de trabajar directo). Como cambian las cosas eh!! En fin. Lo mejor de llegar a Madrid, sentir un poco de calor y sol despues del mes que hemos pasado en Basel. Por cierto, aqui sigue lloviendo.
Despues de que me cambiara en casa de David y Queca vamos a recoger al abuelo aka Miguel Alvarez aka Miki aka "el hombre domado para las tareas domesticas" (explicacion mas abajo). Miki se esta tomando una cana sin dinero en el aeropuerto esperandonos. Luego llega Chesco de Mallorca que seguro que con el horario ajustado que tiene le ha dado tiempo a pegarse un bano en la playa antes de venir. Juntos, alguien pregunta por Oscar, y Miki tarda 5.3 seg en decirnos que esta en valladolid por "trabajo", y se le escapa la risa claro.
Despues nos juntamos todos en casa de Maria, cena, una copa, y una segunda y ultima por que manana hay que estar frescos para la boda.
En casa de Maria dormimos un servidor con Miki y Chesco. Pudimos descansar mucho, sobretodo gracias al sonido nasal de Miki y la habilidad de Chesco para regular el aire acondicionado por la noche ("Estoy acostumbrado a regular el aire acondicionado por la noche", que gran frase).
Por la manana descubrimos el motivo por el que Oscar ha estado viviendo con Miki todo este tiempo. Maria lo descubre vamos. Miki, quien te ha visto y quien te ve. Mujer, pon un Miki en tu casa y olvidate de todo.

Antes de ir al hotel en Bohadilla por la tarde, decidimos tomar unas canas y comer algo en la Latina. Durante la manana del sabado me doy cuenta de que realmente tengo ya ganas de volver de suiza para disfrutar de cosas como esta:

Siete de la tarde encuentro con las chicas en el hotel. Estan cabreadas por que nosotros no estamos fuera del hotel dentro del coche con el motor encendido ya. Para hacer honor a la verdad fue mejor dejar las cervezas pre-ceremonia sin terminar y llegar a tiempo para saludar a Alberto antes del...momento.

Guapas, muy guapas

Companeros de piso hace ya 6 anos (veis como queda mal escribir en castellano con este teclado!!). De compartir el piso-sala de reuniones y fiestas varias- en Pisa a firmar como testigo de la Boda. Fer y el novio:
Luego garbamos unos videos de felicitacion para Alberto en la puerta de la Iglesia si no recuerdo mal. Aqui aprovechare para aclarar mis palabras en uno de ellos, por lo menos depues de ver la cara que puso Amparo cuando lo dije. Alberto, la frase es"yo en Italia ya sabia que aguantarias"...Sabes que llevo un tiermpo fuera de espana y se me esta oxidando el idioma. Sustituimos la ultima palabra por "seguiriais juntos y os casariais ok? Puedes dar el ok cuando vuelvas de Birmania, no hay problema.

Las chicas
Los chicos
Y bueno, pues al final se casaron claro, para eso estuvimos en Madrid este fin de semana. Y pudimos tirar un poco de arroz y todo. Lo podeis ver aqui (Jose, como buen valenciano, antes de que salgan los novios suelta un..."que ya va que ya va", como si por la puerta de la iglesia fuese a salir un toro para embolar o algo asi).

Lo que erasmus ha unido.....parte2

2006-09-11T12:25:00.000+02:00

Recien casados. A estas alturas de la noche (antes del pastel era esto creo) Alberto ya estaba de fotos hasta....Bueno igual no. Hay que decir que ahsta que sus colegas de trabajo no el hicieron poner la corbata en la cabeza y bailar el trenecito con "la gasolina" de fondo, el novio no perdio la compostura en toda la noche.La mafia. Los unicos contactos que tuvo Fer con gente del Pais cuando estuvo en Pisa fueron basicamente del sur del pais. Fer, suerte que al final te has vuelto un hombre honrado y trabajador. Miki en cambio, de honrado no tiene nada y como buen gitanillo gallego se robo unas botellas de la mesa de los suegros. Este es el momento en que las estava subiendo a la habitacion antes del baile.
Amaya, esta foto la pongo por que asi cuando me pregunten en suiza sobre la boda los que no saben leer castellano les digo que la chica de azul fue mi ligue del fin de semana.
Maria y Amparo, o Amparo y Maria, como querais.
Alberto perdiendo la compostura
A partir de aqui ya todo el mundo habia perdido la compostura
Miki, hay que decir que una vez analizadas las fotos y los videos de la boda, este fin de semana has estado antologico. Una muestra mas de las dotes de Miki
Mas perdidas de compostura
Los novios con menda
Hector y Dani los reporteros de la noche, con "il padrino". El humo de la foto, por la tonalidad del blanco, yo diria que debe de provenir de la mano derecha de Fer escondida detras de Dani.
Sin comentarios. Ultima foto que tengo de la noche.
Y la ultima foto para Jose. La imagen es despues de que desayunaramos con Alberto y Julia antes de que se vayan a Birmania, y despues de que Miki le dijera a la de recepcion con toda normalidad que se lo cargaran todo a la habitacion de Julio Salinas, la 151. No colo ni de broma Miki, por que la chica te habia visto ya el dia anterior por la noche cantando Camilo Sesto con los labios pintados de rosa. La foto: Jose (con cara falsa de sorprendido), mostrando parte de lo que habia en nuestra habitacion a la manana siguiente. El dice que no sabe ni de quien era ni como llego hasta alli. Yo por supuesto me fui a dormir antes que el y tampoco se nada. Misterios de las bodas no Jose?

Ha sido un placer estar de nuevo con vosotros celebrando la boda de Alberto. Me guardo un fin de semana en Noviembre para nuestro proximo encuentro, esta vez espero que para darnos un atracon de marisco por alli arriba. Ciao!!

BOW in 7 pics

2006-09-08T13:29:00.000+02:00

I don't have time since I am leaving in an hour to Mdrid for the weekend. We have another SWW.....or which is the same, another sumer weekend wedding. Maybe is better to say another "very end of the summer" weekend wedding. Call it as you like, but that means a good weekend to come, especially because I will be meeting the People that were with me in Italy a loooooong time ago when I did my eraasmus exchange. (Alberto tio que te vas a casar!!!!!! No me lo creo todavia). As I said I have to leave, so I will leave the comments about the wedding for next week and leave you know with some pics from yesterday BOW and pre-BOW moments. Lots of "leaving" in this sentences. By the way, these weekend events are good not only because I am having great time but also because they help to keep the blog going without having to dig a lot into any creative story or writing.
Titles for the pictures are the following, we can name them as if modern art paintings:

1) terrace with white umbrellas...and some people
2) Detail of terrace with nice umbrellas....and some people (Ei here we are. That is pre-BOW dinner in Restaurant Kaserne)
3) Transexual transformation of an IESE exchange student from LBS (see the T-shit?). Aaron, that is what happens to you when you wear that red thing for too long.
4) Aaron happily accepting his (her) new role in the group.
Interlude: I am lucky that Aaron has left today and I won't see him until we start at IESE because I am not sure about the consequences of the past two pics. (Aaron, dude, I had to post that you know ;)

5) percentage of BOW components...smiling
6) Woman hand and Persons' (me) thorax 7) Go home its too late fountain (in yellow)
See you next week. Music for today, a peticion de cuartero aka D.Vader : Beck-Guerolito

Interlaken: Unspunnen, or the end of a complete weekend

2006-09-05T21:10:00.000+02:00

I haven´t written anything about this sunday, and I think it is worth to mention (and watch), so let´s go.
When I woke up in Rene´s house Sunday morning, Simone was reading the newspapers and told me that specifically that day a very especial event was going on in Interlaken. The "Unspunnen", a traditional swiss festival, with traditional swiss wrestling, traditional swiss music, traditional stone throwing, traditional dressing, traditional food...and traditional tourists around. All the surroundings are very nice, but the town itself is really turistic. This was confirmed after I saw Josh laughing and taking pics of a "Hooters" restaurant, which apparently are very famous in the US. I guess the difefrence is that in the Interlaken Hooters, together with the young and undressed waitress, you find families of farmers with their kids, grandparents in traditional dresses, women from the region drinking huge beers....and of course, tourists.
The "Unspunnen" event takes its name from the stone that is thrown in a contest there, and that apparently has been stolen twice by a group of radical guys from the Jura region. What an unconfortable thing to steal, don't you think? Especially because if you are discovered in the attempt, I can tell you, because I saw them, that the men that will go after you can easily shift a cow and throw it to you, and that will hurt, promise.
It could be a bad idea to go there also, considering the amount of people we would probably find, and the consequent more than probable traffic jam afterwards. Anyway, both me and Josh were pretty sure we wanted to go there. Besides, there was a bit of a confusion, and we thought that the event was going on every 12 years. 12 years!! of course we have to go there!!! That would probably make it the most important event in the world. I think that reality is closer to the 12 months period in between, but we were convinced (only for some minutes) that we were driving to a very very unique and unfrequent event. The road to Interlaken is great and I did some really nice pics that I can´t post because blogger.com image loading said "enough". The road that goes there is one of those places where you would stop the car every two seconds to take a picture. Doesn't matter you won't see the "mountain and lakes pics" that I took, we have the core of the post uploaded already.

Interlaken:What you see below made the whole trip absolutely worthy. Raclette against hangover. Forget about ibuprofen or other pharmaceutical stuff. Just eat one or two of those and you will feel good, very good. (more than two will make you feel a bit "heavy" but still really good).

Fashion in Interlaken:

These are the future stone throwers:
This group of women waiting for the train, discovered us while taking pictures behind a bush. We were following them for a while...you will se why. The one in the middle is just pointing at me.
And here, we just do a pause to say that this weekend I found the reason I accepted an internship in Switzerland this summer. Now everything makes sense...it is fate! The reason I came here in July (and will stay a bit more while missing the wellcome parties & events that are already going in barcelona due to the start of the MBA again) is.....THIS: Direct from the mountains, the sound of angels. A W E S O ME.

And we also had some traditional dancing around. everything surrounded by a huge group of tourists, that had already decreased by the time we arrived in the afternoon. However, I think it was better to be there at that time, because the protocols of the party were a bit broken and the men and women from the mountains were really enjoying themselves after a few drinks. Some afternoon dancing.

Commenting the day in "Pony Bar"
And around 6pm, time to go home guys.

GOOD BYE!

Music for the day: No discussion today, just clic on the first link above and you will see what is the hit of the summer.

Zurich part2

2006-09-03T23:28:00.000+02:00

I like Zurich. No doubt about it. Its an affordable city (in terms of size I mean, prices are another very different story), nice, with history, with a river and a lake, good shopping, cool people (at least the ones that I know), and with an awesome nightlife that is starting to kill me (this is my last time there for this sumer so I guess that won´t happen).
On friday me and Josh decided to rent a car and spend the weekend between Zurich and Interlaken. My initial plan was to go to Interlaken on Saturday and then join Rene, Simone, Dorjee and Ivana in the evening in Zurich to have dinner and then go out. That was my initial plan according to the long night I spent in Zurich last time, which didn´t allow me to do anything useful the day after. Well, at the end we went to Zurich on Saturday but we also accomplished the Interlaken objective today. In fact it turned out to be much better to go there Saturday.

After walking some time through the center we went to have a sausage in front of the lake, and after 30 seconds of sausage with bread, the crowd below joined us to share the bread. If you want to be alone in front of the lake when eating anything eatable, do not start to throughing small pieces of bread into the water because you will have all the ducks (and relatives) of Zurich around you in a very short time period, and multiplying themselves in a very fast way.
It was a sunny day and after eating we decided to go to another part of the lake, so we took the car and we thought that maybe was a good idea to "circle" the lake and get to the park we wanted to go from the other side. after 10 min drive we checked in the map. The distance is aprox the same as if you go to basel and come back. Lets say it is not exactly a pond, so we rationally decided to go for the fast way.
After the sightseeing and a troublesome coffee in front of the lake we joined Dorjee and Ivana so that Josh could change and leave everything in their place. The coffee issue is just that I asked for a glass of ice with the coffee (obviously, to put my coffee inside and drink it cold), which turned out to be broken and, well, that created a bit of a mess in the table. I asked for another glass with ice (this time not plastic please), and of course expecting another coffee. the waiter looked at me as if I dumb and said: "Another coffee?? I though you only wanted a glass of ice". Oh yes, I just want a glass of ice because I like to refresh my fingers on it, it is not to put any liquid on it. Anyway.

We went then to Rene and Simone´s place, and then to a nice restaurant. After dinner we had to walk. That was a physical necessity due to the volume of food that everybody had in the stomach. and we walked towards a really really cool place. An open air club which is only opened for a month, in the space of the landesmuseum (kind of castle building). The music they play can be heared on air in Rundfunk.fm. Good music and the environment is really nice. I would say that place is a must if you are in zurich during summer.

In Rundfund both me and Josh were realy dissapointed for forgetting the camera that night (the pic above is from the net). And I was even more dissapointed when we arrived at a party in another place after Rundfund. Rene´s mobile did its best so that we could have a picture of the group in the terrace (already warming up).

By coincidence, this Saturday all the museums of Zurich were opened until 4am, with drinks and parties in all of them ("Lange nauht der museum"). the long night of the museums. After visiting all the museums you want with one ticket, and having drinks in nice places, "everybody" goes to Kunsthaus, where the end-party takes place. Yeah, that was a really good party. The place (a museum hall transformed into a night club) of course its nice, and the music was great. Without the camera there you will have to belive me. After 1 hour there, the Interlaken trip for Sunday started to become secondary and to be in serious danger. No problem. That was a great party.

The night eneded at a "prudent" time, and luckily we have made it to Interlaken today. This morning, I have managed to cross zurich by car without getting lost, and picked Josh (or I'd better say Josh without voice). Around 4pm, after stopping several times the car to get some pictures of the nice views that you have on the way there, we were already in Interlaken, where by chance, today there was a traditional party....But that, that is another long story with lots of pics and we will leave it for the next post.

Ohh, I was forgetting something important, very important: THIS!!!!! YEEEEHHAAAA!

Violent breaking news

2006-08-31T20:30:00.000+02:00

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)

2006-08-27T22:31:00.000+02:00

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)

2006-08-27T22:30:00.000+02:00

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

De que estas hablando Willis, and La Bola de cristal

2006-08-22T22:23:00.000+02:00

There are different things that make you think about something in particular (what a ridiculous sentence, sorry for my writing and expression skills). I mean that the same thought about one experience you had in the past or something that you like or dislike, is usually triggered by many things, such as a conversation related to that, something you hear, see, smell. Whatever. There is no exception for this, everyone the same I guess, but for me its funny to realize sometimes how I start to think about something by connecting things that have zero in common with that. And at least in my case the connections can be really weird sometimes (again, as everyone else). Ok, all this short introduction to explain the reason for this post, which, by the way, has been triggered by a simple and very normal chain of related thoughts that are not a good example at all of what I have written above. Anyway...

Yesterday, while reading TVU's blog post about the 80's, I started to think about different music groups from that time (the truth is that at that time I was not interested in music at all, that came later to my life and has not abbandoned me yet ;), tv series, films.etc.etc. Well, then I spent an hour with Jack Bauer and went to bed. This morning I was having breakfast and doing zapping, trying to avoid repetitive news from CNN and the XXXteletubbies again, when I saw a woman on the TV that remembered to another woman from another TV series of the 80s. The 80s again. Then I changed channel once more to BBC (more news about Lebanon and Irak), and I though about the teletubbies again, and finally I started to think about the Tv programs we had in Spain when we (people of my age) had when we were a bit older than the teletubbies watchers, and finally I arrived to the conclusion that if you were not a Spanish kid at that time, you missed a really good program for children, much better than the ones they play now on Tv for the 00s children. (That sounds really strange, imagine in 20 years: "Did you remember the 00s?". Yes, sounds weird) by far: La bola de Cristal. What a program!!!! Os acordais de "los electroduendes y la bruja averia" Hahaha, los electroduendes, with "La bruja averia" aka Alaska. Definetely superb!!!
Here another sample of good stuff from that time:

I don´t remember quite well, but I am sure she was one of my first erotic miths. The woman from above, not Arnold. Arnold!!! Hilarious. (maybe in english its not Arnold?) In Spanish the sentence when you look at the picture below is: "De que estas hablando willis?" Sorry but I am in the middle of a laughing attack right now.
Well, now to a very difefrent thing, with no mental connection with the 80s.

There is a curious new building that has started to function this summer inside Novartis. One of them, because the campus is in the middle of a construction orgasm this summer. I mean "to function" because the building in the second pic, which is close to the one that I really like, has a screen that displays all the time sentences and popular and not so popular "says".

Everyday they display sentences in alphabetical order. I am not sure of the purpose of this sentences, if there is one, but maybe the managers who decided to install the flashing screen thought that people would stop to read them. Bad thought. The garden in front of the building is full of trees and you can read anything. Second, you really look like an idiot if you stop in the middle of this "garden" to read them. Third, the letters are too big, which takes a lot of time to read them. And I am not sure how to interpret the sentences displayed in the "working environment". Examples of "non-selected" sentences: Offenders never pardon, old hunters never fall into traps, on a good bargain think twice, revolutions are not made with rose water, roses are scented but bread keep us alive, the person in a hurry does it badly twice, the rich are at home in a foregin land, the remedy for boredom is to get used to it (no no, the remedy is to think and not be bored). ok, that is enough or otherwise you may think i really stood like an idiot in the garden copying sentences.

I am not sure if i will be able to post anymore this week since Jack Baurer and one book are taking my time after work (which is not much to tell you the truth), and we still have to look for accomodation in Milan. yes, Milan, this weekend we go to Italy!!! with Ignacio, Paco and Eugenio.

Music, from the begginings of those mentioned 80s: Depeche mode - Just can´t get enough

And the sun brought....Jazz!

2006-08-20T15:30:00.000+02:00

It last only one day, but after almost two weeks of rain, on Friday afternoon the sun showed up to bring us a bit of music. Anne, from my department, told me in the morning that in the afternoon there was going to be some music around the city, and it was worth to have a walk through the old part of Basel while hearing some music: The 23rd edition of the jazz festival in basel. I was supposed to meet Helen, Fernanda, and Cynthia later, but when I finished my haircut I came home, had a shower, and then decided to go to see some of those bands for myself before joining them. What the woman at work didn´t tell me was that there was going to be so many people around, and so many bands of jazz!! I expected some bands playing in the downtown squares, but everywhere in the city was packed. I spent around 2 hours from stage to stage (33 in total, impossible to see everything), and then meet the girls for some drinks with jazz & funky. It is as if the bad weather stopped only for an afternoon to allow people to enjoy the city and the music. Also inside each bar, restaurant and hotel, there was a band of jazz playing. I find Jazz a difficult music to listen to a long time, but it always sounds good, and a lot of jazz songs have one special thing that I like: You can hear the same jazz song, and one time makes you feel very happy while the next time you hear it sounds melancolic or even sad. But Friday everything sounded like the first part.

One of the best bands, or at least the one that made people move the most, was a group of guys that call themselves ED Elastic (in the pic below) . They were playing from 8pm until 11pm around the streets. I recorded a couple of videos in case you want to see how was the environment. Funky, ska, and of course, jazz.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBdGgTWF1KY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMJqIn78H3Y

But the first prize goes to....The retired band. They are still an active band, the only difference is that their members are all retired, or at least that is how they looked like, both by their name and their age. Hot and Sweet jazz.

Quiet music, relaxing....as it says: "hot and sweet". With a very tender banjo included. The guy with the trumpet made a joke during one of the songs. He suddenly stopped playing after the moment his face was very read because of the effort of playing the trumpet, and some of us believed that was going to be the end of the "happy" gradfathers. Nothig far from reality. The happy gradfathers are still happy and playing jazz in another city.

A curious thing that I noticed was that the average age of the people around (and there was a lot of people) was quite high, which I don´t understand, because it was really a cool evening to stay out and enjoy some music and drinks in the streets. I don´t know the explanation for this. maybe the average population of basel is just like that, or maybe older people know better how to have fun in Basel than young people? (even if only for one night), because I have never seen so many people around here. For a moment it looked like a very crowded city, full of people, with hundreds of bars everywhere and people having drinks in the terraces.

After almost 4 hours, some beers and one glass of Sangria, it was time to leave. I really needed to sleep properly after this week. Yesterday I did basically nothing appart from sleeping, eating, reading, answering emails, and go for a run during the only half an hour that it was not rainig in the afternoon. And this morning I realized that I fall asleep around 10pm beacuse I had to go out and I didn´t. I guess that my last thought yesterday was something like: Marc, now you have to stand up, have a shower, shave, put some clothes, go to have more drinks again.......zzzzzzzzzzz.

And today, Sunday, while I am writing this the tree close to my window has started to move as if end of the world weather is back in town (how strange is that here!). "Oh, Zeus, king of the gods and god of the sky and thunder! Please, leave me in peace for some weeks, at least until the end of september!!" The only thing I can offer to the divinity right now is.....more street music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoGxuvKPsaM

Sun and haircut. v1.1

2006-08-18T16:10:00.000+02:00

Friday, at the end we are in friday. The letters of this noun sound really good when pronounced in any language (even in swiss-german!). F R I D A Y. Yes, sounds good. Especially when after two weeks of "end of the world weather" this morning the sky looked exactly like you can see in the picture I took in my way to work. Blue. That is, in my opinion, the right colour for te sky. Ok now enough about weather because some people may think I am obsessed with this and it is not the case.

I was supposed to go to Amsterdam this weekend but at the end I will have to stay here. Among various reasons, because i will spend some time this weekend with my friend "Power" and his brother "Point". Yes, lovely pps presentations. Today at lunch, because it is part of the life of 90% of the interns I guess, we were talking about how useless is sometimes to spend so many hours adjusting graphs, colours, tables.etc Everything to make very easy and simple things look better for 5 min. Of course pps is very useful and necessary, but sometimes...."Man, the sales are 25milion" Isn´t that enough???That I use my mouth instead of a red-colour bar with special bright effect to tell you.....25. Do you need the 25 milion in 10 colours and plotted against 20 graphs in 30 colours? The useless part comes when you start (especially if you are like me in this issues) to adjust every line at the same height, every font at the same size. You can spend hours and hours and still doesn´t looks "enough" good. And you are not really doing any useful job, just changing colours and shapes.....Eh, wait a sec, the numbers and the colours mentioned here do not apply to reality. I don´t want anybody to think that this is my opinion of the work I have been doing last days, but sometimes this powerpoint.....

Ok, another thing. Now I am again with agent Jack Bauer in the evenings. My first shopping in amazon worked and I am again enjoying 24 the days I stay at home.

Yesterday we had the BOW at cargo, a bar close to the River. Helen is leaving us and lot of people showed up. She goes on exchange to Berkeley. I guess we will see each other again maybe before the Olympics. The number of assistants to the bar of the week is increasing week after week.

I have to leave. I escaped from work one hour ago because I have an appointment to cut my hair. Yes, hair does not stop growing during summer-time and I think it is necessary to stop this Jacksons5 look that I am starting to adopt, especially because I have still more than a month here in Basel and I am not sure if the afro look would be very welcomed in my department. Anyway, I took a picture of my hair yesterday (my face is there because I can not sepparate it from my hair), just to remember how it was in case the things go wrong in some minutes, although I think that for 60 francs, yes, 60 francs!! the girl won't go crazy qith the scissors.

Good weekend to everyone

Fast Update: I was going to delete the pps part, which I don´t like, but instead of this I will announce that the haircut was ok. yes, ok. I survived. There is people afraid of going to the dentist, I am afraid of hairdressers when I am not in bcn (I have had some really bad experiences when cutting my hair abroad). Doesn´t matter is an expensive hairdresser. When they see you as a foregineer that does not speak the language, they send you straight to the "begginer", and you never know if you will end up looking like Jim Carrey in "Dumb & Dumber". Anyway, at the end of the day a haircut is not important because "La mona, vestida de seda, mona se queda".
I go to the jazz festival we have in town today.
Again, good weekend.
Ah, the music: Gnarls barkley - smiley faces

Ni chicha ni limoná

2006-08-16T00:20:00.000+02:00

I have been thinking today that without my weekend photos this would be a really boring blog, more or less like my weekdays here in basel since the weather turned to be a kind of soft winter. I can't go to swim in the river after work, and don´t know why but I prefer to stay at home after having dinner (I am still waiting for the second pack of 24 series that I bought in amazon last week). Work...I promised myself I would not speak about work in the blog, but you can guess it is having some influence in my mood lately, and is making me think a lot about what or where I want to be next year once I have to come back to reality after the MBA. But this is another story, and as I have heard somewhere before, "forecasts are difficult to make - particularly those about the future".

Well, we will always have the weekends. Until now not bad. I haven´t got the marevlous experiences that other bloggers are having in airports during weekends but I still have some weekends to go, lets see. Maybe we go to Amsterdam on Friday and Paco is tempting me with a trip to Berlin on the following.

I think one of the things that has more influence in my "down" mood is the weather. In Spanish we say "ni chicha ni limoná"= useless or half way between nothing and nothing. This is a bit difficult to translate and it will take half of this post (if you are not interested in Spanish jargon you'd better skip this). Literally, "ni chicha ni limoná" means neither "meat" (or "fat"), nor lemon juice. Weird eh! If you search a bit you will find that "chicha", appart from the eatable thing or the excess of kg, it also refers to an alcoholic drink from mais (originally from southamerica). Wrap up: People used this saying to mean that there were no alcohololic nor refreshing drinks left = No drinks, bad mood..."useless"....more or less. Now the connection with the weather in Basel. Well, I guess I would be rather enjoying a bit of snow in the weekends and go everyday to the office with a proper jacket full up of feathers under -10ºC, than thinking we are in the middle of august and my wardrobe is full of (now) useless fancy summer t-shirts and shorts that I only see when I take one of my suits. By the way, another type of clothes that are not exactly appropriate for this weather: Suits.
I admit that myself and some other people from "dry" countries like spain are a bit weird with the clima, especially when we claim for more sun and always complain when it is raining, while in Spain there are around 200 fires all over the country because if there is something for which we should claim a bit, that is precisely rain. (ahh, but now I am not in Spain). At least in London you think it is always shit weather and that is fine. Here you buy your swimming bag to go to the river because is summer-time, and then what you find instead of summer-time is "ni chicha ni limoná". And I have to walk around 20 min to work everyday, 20 min full of uncertainty :)

This reminds me that I have started another routine here: Reading in my way to the office while I walk. Ali told me the other day she usually does that, and I thought I never do this. Now I know the reason. This is a clean country (with a strange weather, but clean), and reading while you walk is not dangerous because there is a very low probability of putting your foot right in the middle of a dog´s disposable income, sorry, disposable intake I mean.

Music: Victor Jara - ni chicha ni limona

Zürich and Street Parade2006...Yippie Yippie Yeah!

2006-08-13T21:20:00.000+02:00

Quiet and relaxing Sunday at home. I needed to rest sooooo much. Ah, by the way, summer is definetely finished in Switzerland :(
At the end I managed to take the 7:07pm Friday train to Zürich, after having to come back home twice because of my chronic tendency to forget things. At 8pm I met Rene at the station, another friend from last summer in London that I managed to see again after one year, who offered me hospedage for Friday night. And then a veeery long and exhausting weekend started. First we had dinner at his place with his girlfriend Simone, who is pregnant and will have the baby most probably the day I leave Basel on September. (This is a summer full of babys and weddings surrounding me...I am scared...Don´t know how to interpret this sign from my surroundings). After dinner, Dorjee and his girlfriend Ivana came for some drinks. We were talking about the fact that I only see Rene and Dorjee when there is a terrorist attack in London. Casualidades de la vida.

After good conversations, and once we finished the wine, it was time to try Zürich nightlife, and we went to Hive club where joined some other friends. Among them, (this is only for IESE people), the Swiss version of Rodolfo!!! Clavadito, with the yellow jacket. I guess that I also have a person that looks exactly like me in some part of the world, however this weekend I have only seen Rodolfo's swiss twin.
We finished quite late on Friday, and Saturday morning I realized that I was not in the perfect shape for....Street Parade. An obvious thing that everybody knows but I ignored on friday: If you are of my size, never try to drink at the same rithm as a 1'90 smth tall guy and his Nepali-Swiss-Argentinian friend. No way.

Saturday....Street Parade: If you have time and want to see all the weird, funny, wasted, not so wasted, old, young, and other kinds of people that I captured with my camera, you can see them Here. No comments for these pics.

Well well, just one comment from the pic below. have you seen what is that guy doing!!! Another advice: Methylenedioxymethamphetamine is bad for your health, but appart from that, if you have a "cleanning lady soul inside you", maybe it goes out. Cleanning the Street parade streets...utopia. I think that guy is still there with his broom.

Good Bye!!

Music for the weekend. Both Friday and Saturday heared this so there is no doubt today: Deichkind-Remmidemmi, and Prodigy-Out of Space (but the reggae version ;)

Almost in Zurich, almost

2006-08-10T20:30:00.000+02:00

Given that my reasons for continuing smoking were obviously weak, and destroyed by Noelle's cost accounting skills, I'd better stop writing about this issue until I find a better excuse.

I wanted to write something original that I have been thinking about this afternoon, after reading an article about the brain differences of men and women, but I guess this post will never happen. First reason is that after watching a computer screen with small excel cells at 80% size during 12 hours I am veeery tired of computer, i don´t have enough time, and I want to finish this fast to go have a drink and maybe recuperate a bit my "normal" face expression. Second reason is that given the controversial nature of both the article and my opnions, I still have doubts about what to say there being ironic in english and not looking stupid ("a cautela, cautela y media").

OK, so today I will only show the video of the concert we went yesterday close to the river. Nice place to listen music after work and relaxing a bit. I don´t remember the name of the group, they played some reggae, folk, and rock, which change my mood after all. The stage is in the middle of the river. If the weather is good you can do the Rhine bath with live music. However, the concert was extremely short, and after 40 min everybody was leaving....It was not even dark yet!! Strange, very strange. Another possibility is that they made a pause and because of the stereotypes we were already complaining about the Swiss nightlife and left. i wanted to watch another chapter of "House" so no problem.

Good weekend to everybody. I come back next week when my body is recovered from the Street Parade and post some pics. I was thinking about not going to Zurich because of work today...Stupid idea. I hope to see another frind from London last year, and then: Saturday inferno in Zurich. Today the girls have gone to do some shopping to dress up on Saturday for the occasion. I was enthusiastic at the begginig (this is not exactly true), but now I am thinking that dresing like a "megadiscogay" is not for me. The option of thong and cowboy boots for which Ali was very enthusiastic was discarded right from the beggining....no no, before the beggining! Aaron, come on, I am sure you are not going to deceive like me!

Blandiblu and more about cigarretes

2006-08-08T23:04:00.000+02:00

I am sorry but my decision to give up smoking has to be postponed. Yesterday I realized that I have an entire box of 10 camel that I bought in the "dutyfree" in my way back from last weekend in Barcelona. I know that if your reasoning is not in good shape the following lines could look like weak reasoning or a bad excuse (of course it is not the case). One of the incentives to give up smoking that I mentioned in the last post was the economic one. If the incentive is to save some (currency) as I give up my camels, in the case I do not touch the box, I would have lost a considerable amount of money invested in cigarretes. This means that in order to make the most of the economic incentive to give up smoking, I have to smoke around 10 more packets. I am not going to sell the box (this is an ilelgal activity in Switzerland), and I am not the Santa Claus of smokers, so the option of giving it to someone is by no means considered. Besides, with the "santa" option, I would be incurring in the violation of the moral incentive as I would be inducing the lucky person to perceive smoking as a free activity and then making him/her unaware of his/her economic incentive (me estoy liando un poco). In conclusion, this represents around 200 more camels to be smoked in order to give up smoking. At an average of 10 cigarretes a day, including saturday and friday nights, this gives me 20 more days in which the economic incentive will be overcoming and hidding my moral incentive......And stop talking about smoking until then.....Thank god I bought that box!

Ok, now the main reason for today's post. Work has been increasing steadily last weeks and now we are close to the peak...hope so :( As most of you know, I am sharing the office with my friend Ali from IESE. We have recorded a short video this afternoon. Me and Ali at the office (Or I should say me and Ali's toxic substance). The contaminated office
Note: If this is my last post ever that means either Ali has killed me for posting this or I have died from "green" intoxication.

Well, as I said lot of work, so not much to say appart from "chorradas". Tomorrow I go to have some drinks with people from Paco's floor in Novartis (biologists....yeah), and then we will probably go to one of the open air concerts that "Basel center of the music in summer" offers in August. And the rest of the week I will have to dedicate more hours to work in order to compensate for the fact that I will be pretty tired on monday. This weeeknd...Zurich! Street Parade!!
2nd Note: When I write "Basel center of music..etc" it is not in ironic way (you know). As an example, Paco told me that in his first day here in Basel, when the relocation agency woman was showing him the city in their way to the appartment that all interns have for the summer, she stopped for a second in front of an old building, to tell him that 4 years ago, Simply Red was playing in Basel.....Simply Red!!!! WOW...4 years ago!!! No..that is not possible! How I didn´t know about that???!!!

On the other hand, this weekend I will think also about Chovar (the little town I go near Valencia). They will be starting the holiday week there, and for second year in a row I won´t be there enjoying the party, the town, the people, the best "patatas bravas" in the world, the paella contest after midnight, and the bulls running in the streets. In fact I think I will post next week about the bulls in the town.

Music for the green slime toxic substance: Morcheeba - Antidote

Sunday in Lucerne, my incentives, and some pirates

2006-08-07T00:40:00.000+02:00

Sunday. I stayed at home on Friday because me and two more people planned to go to Lucerne on Saturday morning, and also because after finishing the 7th and last DVD of the 24 series, I have a new pack of DVDs to maintain myslef occupied at home when I am not reading, working or going out ("House"). Saturady morning was rainig a lot, so no daytrip to Lucerne by popular decision. I really wanted to go there for some hours so I didn´t go out on Saturday, and this morning, although was still raining I was in a train around 9am. Rationale:
1) I have started a new book and reading in the train through the swiss mountains is more interesting than reading in my appartment or inside a bar in Basel (reading under the rain is not an option for me yet).
2) Maybe in Lucerne is not raining (Veeeery naive)
3) Go for walk in a beautiful city and come back to have lunch and my sunday siesta at home.

Lucerne:

Its not raining!! After a coffee in a bar runned by an Italian man, and full of people from Napoli talking with that nice Napolitanian accent, I start my walk in Lucerne. I go first to the most famous monument in Lucerne: The Lion Monument. When I see the monument, a kind of flashback comes to my mind and I feel good. The reason is that I travelled around Switzerland very long time ago with my family, and they always complain that despite all the trips we did together when I was a kid, I don´t remember anything. Just like travelling as another luggage bag until I was 10 or 12 years old, with the difefrence that this one complains, eats, and...Well, I think I remembered the Lion but tomorrow I will check with my mother. Maybe I had never been in Lucern before.

"The dying Lion of Lucerne" was hewn out of natural rock in memory of the Swiss mercenaries at the Tulleries in 1792. Mark twain said that this monument was "the saddest and most moving piece of rock in the world"....And I agree with him, especially with the sad part. The moving...well, I don´t know if he was ever in Firenze and Rome, but the Lion is impressive anyway. Despite the dozens of japanese taking pictures (just like me), you can´t avoid standing for a while in front of this rock thinking about...

Spreuer and Chapel bridges, both of them have paintings from the 17th century inside.
Right after I go out from the bridge the rain comes back again. No problem, the thin "gore-tex" that I bought last week at half price in the middle of the "wealth effect" after receiving my first salary here, has been the best and most useful thing I could have bought in Switzerland(together with the half dozen of different cheeses that I buy every weekend at marketplatz).

After leaving I decide to smoke a cigarrete with the view above, so that 10 or 12 Japanese families and their friends can see me in their photos when they come back to...Japan? The cigarret reminds me the stupid bet I made with Yuha in Frankfurt that I would give up smoking before starting IESE in October (the easiest and most silly way to end up a conversation about "you have to give up smoking" is just to bet with the non-smoker and hpe that he won´t remember after some months). That was after another conversation about the dangerous activity of buying meat in Barcelona beacuse of the bacteria and other microorganisms that you can find in any butcher there. Yuha...you are the best!!
No, seriously, just a comment about tobacco. As I spend more time alone here than in Barcelona, I can say that I have increased the number of cigarretes, but I still have the purpose of winning the bet. Here is where the incentives come (and this is related to the economics book I am reading). Of course, smoking, like peoples decisions in economics, is also based on incentives. The three types of incentives are economical, social, and moral ones.
1) From an economic oint of view, it is pretty obvious that giving up is a wise decision, but I still can afford it and probably I would spend that money in another trivial thing (The fact that in this moment I still don´t have to pay a mortgage or feed and grow a baby helps I guess).
2) From the social point of view, we smokers are not yet viewed as drogadicts and persons without future by most of the people, and I have never believed people who say that kissing a smoker is like sucking an ashtrey. I think I would have noticed that by the expresion of the girl, and pardon my lack of modesty but I still can find lots of "normal" girls who don´t mind kissing an ashtrey. Also at work or inside a plane I have no problem if I can´t smoke for long hours. Conclusion: No social point of view for me in this case. The only thing I could concede here would be that a very important person for me would tell me that she doesn´t want to stay with me if I continue smoking, but this has never happened....yet...ups...next point
3) Moral incentives. These are the ones which I think can save me from the addiction. For example, my health. This is a weak point now, because economics also tell us that people take a lot of decisions thinking in the long-term (eg: you are not going to spend all the money af your internship the first week after finishing because there is still one year of the MBA to go without any salary, and if you have been working in IB in London this summer you don´t have time to spend so many pounds), so it is impossible to think about the health danger of tobacco when you are 26. Final point: sports. This is the key point. I would be a better runner or swimmer without tobacco, and I would feel very proud of with myself if I can give up. So the MBA olympics is one incentive to give up, and my ego after being able to tell smokers as a non smoker that kissing a smoker is like sucking an ashtrey is another incentive to give up (and then I could go out also with women that think like Yuha in this respect).
To finish this long and boring post about tobacco: I am not so sure if my three types of incentives to give up right now are enough to overcome my addiction and the fact that I like smoking. We will see....I am not very optimistic.

After Lucerne I worked for about 2 hours and Sunday has ended with a movie this afternoon (Pirates of the Caribbean). First time in a Swiss cinema, and its like in Italy. They stop in the middle of the film!!!!for around 15 min!! This is the most anti-climax thing possible when you are watching a movie in the cinema. If you have to go to the bathroom or to buy a 2kg pop-corn bag you can do it at the beggining. By the way, in the pause I smoked a cigarrete with Ignacio.

Music for the train in a rainy day: The Notwist (Neon golden)-Pilot ......of the train

Rain in Basel

2006-08-03T21:38:00.000+02:00

After trying the German rain, this week apparently its time to try the Swiss rain. The temperature in Basel its now 15 degrees less than last week aprox, and it looks like November in Barcelona. This afternoon, when I was leaving Novartis I met one of the heads of the department. Lot of people here doesn´t talk much, especially with an intern that is leaving in two months, so we started the usual "elevator conversation" about weather that you have with an average neighbor that you don´t know much.
Marc: What a shit weather eh! This fu----- rain!
Other employee (non-spanish origin): Yeah its great, the temperature now is so good!
Marc: sorry?
Other employee: Yes, no sweating, I can sleep at night, and I really like this weather.
Marc: ahhhmmmm.....yes yes, this weather is much better, who wants that yellow star all the time annoying people, and swimming in the river after work, and reading a book in a nice terrace enjoying a beer, and see all women in their summer dresses.....This grey beautiful sky is much better, and I can sleep at night too (well, this is true). The elevator stops.
Marc: have a good afternoon. Ah! and enjoy the weather. I will do the same......?

I guess the best is always something in between, so that people could live in harmony, not only when talking about weather.

In any case, I have used my umbrella for the first time this summer. The weekend that I went to Barcelona for my uncle's wedding, my mother gave me an umbrella just before leaving...in case a weather like this would come. The only thing is that, well...One comment about my blue umbrella experience: If you have to do an internship at Coca-Cola in a rainy country, the logical way of proceeding when you walk to the office is to not take from home an umbrella with a big Pepsi logo on it. In the pharmaceutical industry, if you are going to do an internship at Novartis, the most logical way of proceeding is to ask your mother (when she is giving you the umbrella in a hurry) if there is any logo on the umbrella that doesn´t.....FIT!! Gracias mama!!! Ahora se por que me miraban todos con cara rara esta mañana!!