6 months

Today it is 6 months since I started dating Iulia.

In this 6 months were quite challenging for us, we have lived brand-new experiences for the two of us: knowing that each thinks of each other at the same time, sharing unlimited time talking about each other, planning our future, helping each other with the weakness and celebrating achievements of each other. There were difficult times as well, specially when we have been away from each other for long (and seemingly endless) periods. We're learning to be one entity with two parties.

My life is changing, and I do suspect where we're gonna get, and I'm gonna do my best to make you happy, to be together, and to love you a lot, my sweetie.

PS: The real gift is in my old backpack :)

A summer vacation

I must admit I'm quite careless with my blog. The thing is that at some point one has to prioritize some things over others, and that's why my blogging activities has been reduced to a bare mininum almost null.

Anyway, I'll try to catch up and revive the main aim of this blog: to keep update all of you about my activities at this side of the ocean (for all my friends on the other side).

Let's go to the point then. This post is about last summer, where my parents came to visit me. They stayed in Europe for a period of 3 months, of which 2 I spent with them. We decide to take most of the chance they were here, so we did some crazy things. As the flew into Barcelona, I went to meet them and come by car to The Netherlands. This was our itinerary:


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We stayed overnight in Lyon where we did some sightseeing in the city. The day after, we arrived to Eindhoven, stopping at midday in Luxembourg.

My parents stayed at my place for one month that we spent traveling of course. We went to places as Cologne, Aachen (in Germany), the punt of the three countries (D-B-NL), Middelburg, Kinderdijk, Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, Den Bosch, Maastricht, Liège, Verviers, Leuven, Antwerp, Gent, Brugge, among others. As I was coming to the university, Brenda y Alberto, friends of mine and the family already, took them out to visit places in the surroundings of Eindhoven. Thanks them a lot!

In the way back to Spain, we passed by Paris where we stayed overnight. The day after passed by Andorra, to stay a few days in Barcelona. Then, following the route of the Mediterranean, we went to Tarragona, Murcia, Lorca, to finish our trip in Pedro Martinez, the village where my father was born. There, we stayed for the main celebration of the town with most of our relatives. We also travel around the village, like going to Granada and Almería.

Of course, in the meantime, I had to come back to continue with my obligations, while they continued enjoyed, with the very nice companion and support of my relatives.

This trip was the best gift I could ever have done to everyone, this was as thanking them for all they always have given me, all the love they could give. Thanks a lot to them, and all who cordially helped us to have a very nice time.

Return trip:


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Horario confundido

Ya se lo venía venir: el quilombo por el horario... la verdad que me dediqué a leer noticias al respecto, y todas me causaban risa.

Opiniones como "no se puede dormir bien", "qué absurdo que haya claridad a las 10 de la noche", "me voy a dormir tarde por culpa que se hace de noche más tarde y al día siguiente me duermo en el laburo". Todas esas opiniones son absurdas, sólo hay que preguntarse cómo hace la gente que vive de Río Negro para el sur en el país...

"Estamos usando un huso horario incorrecto, tenemos que usar el GMT-4". Simplemente hay que hacer unas cuentas y darse por aludido que eso no es usual a nuestras costumbres: en invierno (que es cuando se debería usar sobre todo) en Salta estaría de noche a las 17:40... Y todos aquellos que se quejan porque con el GMT-2 (que es que usará la mayoría del país) se hace de día recién a las 7, les informo que en invierno con el GMT-3 (del cual nadie se queja, porque es un horario de verano, viendo nuestra posición global), se hace de día a las 7:20... Así que todas son opiniones absurdas, basadas en oposiciones de índole política.

Veremos las consecuencias de tener un país partido en dos horarios, mucha gente va tener que estar sincronizada con Buenos Aires de todos modos. Todo basado en decisiones populistas, lejos de venir del sentido común. Al final, alguno de los dos horarios va a ganar... Todo como si fuera un partido de fútbol, te pregunto, vos, ¿de qué lado estás?

Actualización: La verdad que estoy leyendo casi todos los artículos relacionados al tema. Al final, uno con el cual me identifico en su mayoría "Sol de noche". Para mí, no hay placer más grande que anochezca a las 12 de la noche (obviamente, que amanezca a una hora razonable), el día se hace largo y disfrutable, sobre todo si hay buen clima. Irse a dormir a una hora razonable no estar cansado al otro día, queda en cada uno... Me encantó (por desgracia para los argentinos) la parte en la que se habla en la que nos quejamos de todo, y no empezamos a aceptar cosas que en otros lugares del planeta son normales.

Otra actualización: Para terminar de embarrarla: "Doce provincias quedaron exceptuadas del cambio de hora". No quedan dudas que lo que menos prima en estas decisiones es el sentido común... Según dice se exceptúa a ciertas provincias en las que el consumo energético no es sustancial comparado con el total del consumo (lo que es cierto de alguna manera). Lo que seguro no se van a ahorrar son dolores de cabeza al tratar de coordinar algo en la que se involucren dos provincias con diferentes horarios... A todo esto, el 15 de marzo habrá quienes quieran poner a estas doce provincias en GMT-4... por lo menos ya que nos acostumbramos a tener dos horarios que sea en todo el país... O el resultado será que todo el mundo a la misma hora y a dejarse de joder.

Problemas que seguro aparecerán: ¿a qué hora comenzará el horario pico o no pico para las compañías telefónicas?, ¿el horario de protección al menor?, si alguien tiene que viajar de Salta a Tucumán, ¿se dan cuenta que el viaje es una hora más largo? (una hora más corta en el sentido contrario).
¿Vieron a Jujuy como quedó descolgado?

Fuente de la foto: Desde el domingo, habrá dos husos horarios 26noticias.com.ar

Muy encriptados, y no los saben usar

Leyendo este artículo "Calor, sismo y corte de celulares" donde se relata, entre otras cosas, la salida de servicio de un servidor de la compañía de teléfonos celulares Personal, puedo rescatar la siguiente cita, correspondientes a las palabras de la persona de RRII de la compañía, explicando el por qué de la salida de servicio de los servidores:

"son equipos de alta gama tecnológica que vienen muy encriptados"

No sé qué tiene que ver una cosa con la otra (que algo funcione bien a que soporte encriptación), pero es evidente que esta gente se las vio negras para poner a funcionar el servidor de nuevo, a lo mejor porque efectivamente para los operarios lo que esa maquinita muestra son textos indescifrables...

En fin, me gustó además la moraleja de la nota: El sistema está encriptado. ¿Quién lo desencriptará? El desencriptador que lo desencripte buen desencriptador será.

Un paseo por la UNSa

Otra vez TN y la gente me llevó de paseo por algunos de los lugares a lo que solía frecuentar, la Universidad Nacional de Salta.

Es una marcha en reclamo de recomposición salarial, pero si escuchan y observan el comportamiento de los que enviaron el video, más que ser una manifestación por reclamos de salarios, parece ser un recreo...

Fuente: RECLAMO EN LA UNIVERSIDAD DE SALTA

A brief summary: This video is about a demonstration taking place at my former university. But the video has some funny dialogs that, instead of a demonstration, it seems like a break for the students...

A bent weekend

A combination of nice and warm weather (sunny, 28°C), a good place (an amusement park), good friends and colleagues were indications for a very spectacular weekend. In fact, it wasn't for me at all :( This would be a perfect post for the fish's blues...

This weekend, we went to Efteling, an amusement park near Eindhoven with all kind of attractions: roller coasters, boat raft, and all kind of kermis-like things. Great! I enjoyed a lot until I got off the Python (plattegrond -> Ruigrijk -> Phyton), a very nice roller coaster. Everything went well, despite some natural fear before riding it, I enjoy the ride very much. I was even thinking of doing it once more! But when I tried to turn my neck to the right, oh oh a pain started to disturb me a little bit. It continued extending quite fast actually, so just for precaution, I made a visit to the emergency service at the park. I wasn't in a happy situation, but they didn't help quickly either! I had to wait for about one hour to get to a doctor who did some checking on my neck, and confirmed a muscular contraction in its right side. It was something like a torticollis but much worse. So imagine that I had to keep my neck completely turned to my left without even being able to turn it a little bit to the left, with a very limited up and down motion. The doctor just prescribed me some painkillers and basicly send me home to have rest.

Okay, okay, I don't blame them for my bad luck, but at least, they could have more staff to solve more quickly these kinds of situations, and for example, let my friends continuing enjoying the day as they were waiting for the diagnose of my apparently serious problem.

Anyway, after it, I was condemn to wait seated while my friends were in the attractions which I couldn't join, as I basically was unmobilized... Even though this very bad experience, I appreciate that they kept watching at me, taking care of me. And somehow, I acknowledge that I spoil such a nice day a little bit...

After the come back home, an open pharmacy needed to be found. The one opened was next to the emergency entrance of the Máxima medisch centrum, a local hospital. As the painkiller I had taken didn't make much effect on me, I went to visit a doctor there. The very same story as before: I took about one hour to get a diagnose (the same as before, luckily). Feel forms, answer questions to the receptionist, and bear the jokes of the nurse who knew I got my bent neck in an amusement park. Thankfully, I was with a friend, and we had the time to talk and get update for the hour I had to wait for the doctor to come and just tell me go home and take these pills...

As a mental note: what would have happened if my injure was something really serious that required quick action? Nothing, the Dutch way of acting in this kind of situation would've condemned me to the worst... I'm not saying it based on this single incident, but on the many I've heard of...

In a nutshell, financially speaking, I have lost 27€ for the entrance to the park, 15€ in food inside the park, and around 71€ in medicines which aren't covered by my insurance company because of the new regulations in Netherlands(1). That is, I spent 100+€ for a bent neck, but there was good weather(2)... Of course, I should tell you that I slept on Sunday until 4pm because of one of the muscular relaxing pill. A wasted weekend...

(1) The first 150€ that you spend in health services are from this year under your account, this is the new regulation. But they were good enough to not to raise the monthly fee (100+€ in my case). Isn't it an implicit cost raise?

(2) I quote someone say of today: "It seems that summer started this year on August 30th!!" to what I replied "... and it didn't lasted more than 3 days..." Yesterday already started to be chilly and today it's raining like crazy (current temperature is 12°C)

Pictures soon, so you can laugh with me, not at me...

Update: One photo of my bent neck, taking it with some humor. Thanks Kathie for it!!

Privacy issues

To my surprise, many people have asked me to update my blog, continuing updating about my experiences and anecdotes. I feel after these comments that this blog is accomplishing its goal of bridging me and you; my friends and family.

First of all, I should say why I couldn't get updated my blog: the excuse is that I have been very, very busy, not only work-wise, but also with my family, besides some other personal stuff. I'll update opportunely on each of these things.

But now, let me pose a thought I've been having from a long time ago. It's about the privacy and exposure of oneself by keeping updated a blog, or any webpage of public access. Fortunately for me, I'm very much aware of these issues and their consequences. In fact, it isn't that difficult to find posts in the same blogs, or comments from (in general anonymous) the public reading each single post published. Or any insulting comment as well, which is removed my the blog owner eventually. So far, I've been lucky and didn't have many such bad experiences, while I know that it happened to friends and people I know through blogs/social networking pages.

It's also funny to see how some (I'd say most of) people really aren't aware of these issues and, mainly, of their consequences. I have fun eavesdropping people in facebook, getting to know what is going on the parties they go, how their mood is, and even how their relationship is doing. A time ago I commented about the messenger nicknames, this is reflecting many things about people's private life in many many cases.

As a matter of fact, I've been taking some actions to protect myself. Along these actions, I try to be somewhat anonymous, just a guy called José born in Salta, living now in Eindhoven, studying at the local university. I stopped uploading pictures of my recent activities, or at most I only upload a few as decoration of my posts. I've stopped anticipating my future activities or plans. Even when I admit that I have an account in facebook, and in any other social contacts portals, I just have an account to gossip about the other people. And believe me, it's more effective than the so conventional mouth-to-mouth gossip. Nowadays, there are some ways to gain some privacy, though. But either, they are minimal, or people don't know how to activate them in order to minimize exposure.

To summarize, I like the impact this blog is having along my friends, relatives and family. It also put in contact with many unknown people who requested me some information, for instance. The moral of this post is that you should be aware of the risk it takes to be more popular than if one wouldn't have a blog, or an account at any social networking spaces. Now, tell me what you think about this, and if you had or know of any experience with this new way of getting in touch with people.

Hup Holland Hup!

Let's party! The Dutch football team is performing quite well in the UEFA European Championship, (Euro Cup 2008). It defeated Italy, France and Romania with very good scores. Remember that Italy and France were the two best teams in the last World Football Championship! Of course, the excuse for celebrating is just there. For every match people gather in a pub, at home next to a barbecue or with some pizzas. Tons of beers and the very good mood that characterize Dutch people.

It is so high the excitement that they even reflect their happiness in the food. At the canteens of the university even the food becomes orange, the national color! Something that caught my attention was that the healthy sandwiches (gezond broodjes) which normally have cheese, lettuce, tomato, boiled egg and ham, this time they had mandarins! So, I was curious and decided to try one of them. And this is how they look like.

Unfortunately, I didn't find it delicious at all :( But at least I joined the celebration in some sense...

Una de El Tribuno

Me causó un poco de risa leer este titular...
No sé, me dio la idea de que los pobres habitantes los están tratando como ratas. Me hizo acordar a los ciclos de Ética periodística de CQC...
Aquí la noticia original.

Leisure Trips Part II

The another trip I mentioned in the previous post was this, going to Scotland. The main goal was to hike the highest mountain in the UK, the Ben Nevis. Together with some friends, Rogelio, Ángela and Iulia, we went into this adventure.

We flew into Edinburgh and from them we took a rented car to go to Fort William, the town just at the base of the mountain. The first experience for the drivers, and also for me, was to get used to the right steering wheel, and driving on the left. Everything is symmetric, even getting into a roundabout, or drive slowly in the left, overtake from the right. Just weird... Even our drivers would go to the other side of the car, as a left-sided steering wheel car! Luckily our drivers got used to it after some hours :)

The Scottish outback is just great! It resembled me the Puna grassland, but of course, we never went higher than 400masl.

The D-day was the second day there. It started raining quite hard, but later we sunshine started breaking through the fog and the clouds, and we have a very beautiful date hiking the mountain up. With this pictures you can see how excited and happy we were at the beginning.

Later, our faces were reflecting the tiredness...





We got encouraged to go further when we saw the top of the mountain, an incredible experience, provided that you are very exhausted by then!


On the top, everything was just joy and hungriness :) We had lunch, took all pictures for the record, and went down again.





Of course, the going down wasn't as exciting as the ascent because we were already very tired, but the landscape was there to be just contemplated... as going up we had some foggy conditions.




The figures: we climbed up 1300m approx, that's the height of the mountain, but we start from the sea level, so we climbed all its height. It took us 4:40h to get to the top, and 4h to get to the base back. That day, after a very desired warm dinner, we went to bed at 21:40 (time that we just got to the hostel).

The day #3, we continued our trip, a bit improvised, though. We went all the way north-east to Inverness, driving across the Loch Ness. (Un)fortunately we didn't manage to meet Nessy...


In Inverness, after some beers, we wandered around the city, stretching our soring muscles, specially those in our legs! In the evening, we drove all the south to Edinburgh, talking about very spicy topics ;)




In Edinburgh, we had a hostel just in the coast of the North sea, so we decide to go to the coast, and drink some authentic Scottish whisky! It was so cold that all the whisky we drank served to warm our bodies up. Each of us took a quarter of a bottle on average, and I think that at least I wasn't as drunk as I'd have expected...

The day after, the obliged driving over an English car. So did I over a not so busy road next to our hostel :)

And of course, the tour through the downtown... The main attraction the castle. As you can see, the weather played a very nice role, sunny although it was very cold.





The final day, we just had to back home... having very nice memories of this fantastic trip, the four of us as a group spent a very nice time, enjoy 100% every moment. Thanks all of you guys for thaaat(1)

All or most of the pictures are gently provided by Iulia following this link. Thanks a lot!

(1) Common sight for Scotts: every time they are sorry, they say "sorry for/about that", with the 'that' quite stressed. We even laughed when someone was sorry... just funny :)

Leisure Trips Part I

After some time, finally I managed to find some time to sit and write. The question is of course what happened? Just some trips, quite some work, and some social life. Indeed I'm supposed to work now, but I don't feel like doing that, I feel actually sleepy, tired, then let's write something.

Back to the end of April, some cousins came to visit me for the second time, I also took some days off, and we traveled a little bit, through Holland, we visited places as De Keukenhof, the huge park full of tulips and many other flowers I visited 2 years ago.


We also went to Gouda, the town where the Goudsekaas (the Goudse cheese) is originally from. Also to the capital city of the Noord-Brabant province, 's Hertogenbosch.

As as it couldn't be less, on April 30, we went to Amsterdam to celebrate queen's day. I did this already last 2 years, but every year it is a different party. Too crowded according to my perception.

From there, we flight into Prague, and during two days, we visited such a beautiful city. The people a bit rude though, but we had a nice time walking through its streets, going to restaurants, and more walking!



After that, they came back to Spain, and I visited a friend in Bonn, the birth place of Beethoven. I had gone to Köln which is just "next door", but this small and peaceful city is gorgoleous! It just coincide with the Rheininflammen, an exhibition of fireworks that takes all the Rhein river long. Together with her friends, we had a nice time. Here there are some more pictures by my friend.



That week I enjoyed a lot, ended very tired, but after 4 days just another trip was going to come... this, for a future post :)