The "&"-sign followed by various unknown terms

That's it! Forget it!
I'm not going to change it anymore. It's not clear to me what happens, but it seems that unusual signs (written on Picasa as commentary below pictures) convert into "&xxx".
The "xxx" stands for 'quot' or 'amp' or something else.

With unusual signs I mean: "&", " " ",...

I just wanted to let you know amigos.

Belgian beers, what we are proud of!

It's true. We have some of the better beers made on this planet! And I'm saying this in a very modest way.
Sure, there is competition: each country and region wants to profile itself and its products as 'the best', 'unique', 'the most', 'the biggest',...

It has to be extreme to be good, being n°1. That's the direction the world is heading. Sad but true.

Tastes are depending from person to person. But one of the leading websites that's evaluating beers through the opinion of visitors is Ratebeer.com

Check for yourself: http://www.ratebeer.com/Ratings/Ratings-Top50.asp

Westvleteren Abt 12 is a pure Belgian product and rare! For the full story I advice you to have a look on this link: http://www.sintsixtus.be/

Other famous beers are: Hoegaarden, Leffe, Duvel, Kwak (famous for the glass), Stella Artois, Jupiler, Westmalle (Tripel in particular), Vedett, Rodenbach, Kriek, Rochefort, Palm, Orval, Rochefort, Malheur, Maes, Liefmans, Kasteelbier, Grimbergen, Gentse & Brugse Tripel, Ename, Delirium Tremens, Chimay, Ciney, Belle-Vue, Augustijn, Affligem,...

Spanish beers, well Spanish beers are, well, let's say they are different!

Try, compare, and convince yourself!

The Westvleteren-series are not for sale in pubs nor in shops, but some basic must-have-taste Belgian beers can be found in BCN at: Belchica Bar, La Cervecera Artesana, Glaciar Bar, Cerveceria El Flabiol, Cerveceria d'Or, Cerveceria Mengi Mengi,...

Just another day for you and me...

...in the laboratory! (from 9-11 a.m. to 6-8 p.m.)

"How does a "normal" day look like? What are you doing there, in the UAB?"

Well, first of all, there doesn't exist something like a "normal" day!
Every day is different, with its ups and dows, depending mostly on the mood of the pilot plant.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I'm following the (8hrs) cycle of our pilot plant. The other days are filled with meetings and reunions, processing the collected data -and thinking about explanations-, reading -papers in general, sometimes online newspapers-, fullfilling the daily needs of our precious plant, keep an eye on the pilot plant (= to make sure it works 24hrs/day), making the alimentation (or feed, food for the bacteria, eetn vo de bjeestn), keeping the place clean, cleaning the probes, making sure the analyse of the samples is done, walking around in the ETSE, going to have a look and chat with colleagues, making pictures, picking up phones, reading emails, checking Facebook, going to the restaurant to buy myself a Cacaolat or one of these great muffins, buying train & bus tickets for the weekend and begging for credit cards, etc.

And yes, I do wish a day was more than just 24hrs!

Out of business

A nightmare when you're depending on your portable for your work and (abroad) social contact, when you're addicted to your music on its hard disk, when you really like to take pictures but denied to make a backup of them because you thought it would never happen to you...

I had my lesson: when it happens, it's too late! So let's 'backupamos' frequently from now on.

*"Davy?"
-"Yes?"
*"Shall we do that more often in the future?"
-"Pfff, OK than..."

Thank you AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition for deleting the critical Windows file user32.dll; your skills convinced me to pay for the complete version.






After formatting my hard disk (Sp.: disco duro) twice, I'm back online! Unfortunately with the Spanish version of Office, but it's much better than nothing. A Dutch version is on its way and in a few days it's completely history.

Thank you Juan! You have a bigger value than the whole -at 10% speed working- (or maybe it's at 100 for them and picking up phones while eating snacks and coffee is their daily challenge) "help desk" of the ETSE.

PS1: Nothing, except my music, was lost.
PS2: Meanwhile I'm having again AVG on my portable. I guess they won't make the same mistake twice. Right?
PS3: The ETSE-"help desk" helped me after all: they gave me a link on a paper to a website where they "probably could help me". The protocol forbids them to touch computers or portables not owned by the UAB. Speaking of "playing by the book", I'm sure illegal software has never been touched by them as well...

FM de la UAB!

I've never seen an official university open air party like this!

You can compare it to a medium Belgian summer festival: the music, the big stages, the party people, the drinks (Absent incl.), the weather, the sounds of several thousands of young people gathered to let it loose.

Welcome to the "Festa Major de la UAB"!

24.10.2008 Life - Once again, the UAB is celebrating its annual festival, the Festa Major. This year the festival will take place on 6 November at the same location as last year, on the western side of the campus between the Plaça Acadèmica (Rectorate Building) and the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. The Plaça Cívica will continue to be the area reserved for activities related to culture and solidarity.
This year's FM UAB 2008 is filled with activities. There will be the traditional student and association stands - a total of 80 this year - with food and drinks, and prizes for the most sustainable stands. There will also be several concerts, from resounding rock bands to the more mellow grooves of reggae or ska, without forgetting pop and electronic music. This year's guest group will be The Gruixuts, a Catalan Rock&Roll band from the Empordà region, winners of the 2007 edition of Sona9.
The festival will include circus and dance performances and human castle building by the University's castellers. Students can also participate in human table football matches, poem tournaments or rock band competitions and many other activities.
There will be fun and games for all, without forgetting the UAB solidarity stands, the Creative Recycling Area with information on renewable energies used on campus, and health campaigns at the Chill-out area of the "Health Tent".

(from: http://www.uab.es/servlet/Satellite?c=Page&cid=1096476786473&noticiaid=1224829294326&pagename=UAB%2FPage%2FTemplatePlanaDivsNoticiesdetall)

Concert at Harlem Jazz Club

A concert of who?

Fouad Al-Hayani!

I'm sure nobody knows this guy, but the songs were great. All members of the band were into Arabian style. When Fouad was singing and you closed your eyes, it felt like being in the Middle East on midday.

He tried to let us sing (making "sounds") but it's impossible to follow the heights of his voice. It looked like it took a lot of energy to make those sounds.

Toughest question is: what were they singing about? Probably girls, youth, love, like over 75% of all songs ever made.

The music wants to let you dance. A few almost did. Almost.

Thanks for the invitation Jose & Anabel!

Harlem Jazz Club

C/ Comtessa De Sobradiel 8 (barri Gótic)

08002 Barcelona

Spain

(http://www.harlemjazzclub.es/)

Margots new haircut

"A woman changes during her life 26 times her look."
(recent news from the newspapers)

And it seems to be correct: they ARE indeed changing very often. But ok, it's not sure if she's doing it that often like the (let's call it) tittle-tattles say. Honestly it doesn't matter for my blog... For me it's just my silliest message until now! Maybe others think it's the most interesting message I've wrote?
No more words, but pictures.

Dear colleagues, here you got the new haircut of Margot:

PS1: You're next...

PS2: I'm sorry Margot... but you were the perfect example and on the wrong place(s) at a wrong time! :p

Vдℓєŋςιд

"City of fiestas, sun, horchata, paella, orange trees, rice,..."

That's how I would describe this great Spanish city. There's always a place to party, for some reason it rains rarely, they use tigernuts (chufas) to make a drink of it, paella is one of its prouds, oranges can be found in the streets, rice is grown in the south,...

And it's impossible not to mention the "Agua de Valencia" ("Aïgua di València" in Valenciano), to explain "who" is "El Carmen" (= old city center and good place to go out), to ask the question if the money to build "la Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias" was justified, to tell you why my Valencian friends are not pleased with their "Rita" (the mayor), to tell you what the "Túria" is (= dry river converted into a huge park), to tell you churros and buñuelos are best aten with chocolate, to predict the end of "Valor" when my (Belgian/future) chocolate bussiness in Valencia runs at full speed,... This list doesn't stop! I could tell you a hundred typical things about Valencia and at least as many stories (let's say "tonterias")... ☺

After my 5 months of living in Valencia (in 2007), I have returned 3 times. The best part of going back is that feeling you can have with a very familiar place: the coming-back-home-feeling! When every street, every building, has an important role in emotional memories, you never get bored of seeing them.

It was the best period of my life until now.

¡VIVA VALENCIA! (*)




(*) and the people that were/are part of it!

"Alone in 京都 ?"

They are everywhere.
Taking pictures of everything.
Having the best equipment.
They like sushi, sumo, karaoke and robots.
_____________________________________

You never know what's around the corner, and there is always something around it, especially here, in Barcelona! This weekend I made a walk from Diagonal to Plz. Catalunya and from there to Torre Agbar. It's very relaxing and with a small digital camera in my pocket, nothing and nobody is safe. But there are worse than me...

Meet Yuko and her Nikon from Japan (Tokio): living in Brussels to travel in Europe until the summer.










(By now it should be already clear that I'm trying to justify why some time ago I made over 6.000 pictures in less than 6 months. There must be a (lost) Japanese gene in my DNA!)

Unaware of the French band called Air and the existance of their song "Alone in Kyoto".
The criticism on the protocol was during the last years somewhat negative, the song however has been praised: http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=QJ4Pm0N8s78

Kyoto Now!

Average speed of "20km/h"?

Barcelona has an excellent location.
The Mediterranean Sea & the Pyrenees, the beaches & the mountains: it's all affecting the city and its atmosphere!
If the area was plane, our view on the city would be different. La Sagrada Família is one thing, standing on a "mirador" or panoramic view in Park Guëll or Montjuïc while saying "waaau" for over half an hour is another. The further away you go from the Mediterranean, the higher you go in altitude, which is logic in the case of BCN. Roughly you have 3 different zones: sea & beach, city, mountains. That's why if you ask the Catalans here (somewhat unpleased if you call them Spanish people) in which direction to go, they are using terms such as "sube" and "baja", "go up" and "go down". It's a small trick to orientate yourself, but not a very reliable one.

Recently I was looking at a map of BCN and its surroundings. For a bird, it's 12km to the campus. By car, 20km. By metro/train, probably the same. It takes me about 1 hour until I arrive, which makes 20km/h my average speed!
You get used to it and thanks to the flexibility of the Spanish timetables and colleagues in particular, it's even relaxing (even I would like to have spent more time in my large bed).
From my flat it's about 400m to the metro stop of Sagrada Família. Two stops later I switch at Diagonal from metro to (a light version of) train (*). From halfway the trip with the train until the UAB, you get a holiday feeling: beautiful hills and mountains covered in green, small villages and nature.

The network and regulation of buses, metro, (light) train and RENFE is great!
That's what I've experienced yesterday. At 10 a.m. I had a training in ion-exchange chromatography, so I definitely couldn't miss that one! I left my flat at 8.10 a.m. and arrived at Provença at 8.30 a.m. But something was wrong: hundreds of people (yes, the hardworking Catalans are already awake) were waiting to catch the train and couldn't enter because of the security blockage. As far as I can understand Spanish, a train was broken in the next station (Gràcia) due to a malfunction. A quick reconfiguration of my morning plan brought me to the center of all branch lines: Plaza Catalunya.
High frequency trains of RENFE were the solution and that's how I arrived, on time, for my training!

What a morning...
(*) It's actually the same place but:
Diagonal = the name of the metro station / Provença = the name of the train station

Weekends.

Weekends fly by. That's for sure.

On Friday I went out with Stelios and his Greek friends and of course, we had a good time!
He truly is a Greek and that reflects in the way he acts (with our opposite gender), the way he thinks (southern temperament combined with repect for the human body), the way he cooks (and the herbs he uses). He's always cooking with the best olive oil in the world, that one from from his hometown, somewhere located in the south of Greece. The herbs are labelled in his native language but "That's Greek to me"! ("Dat is Chinees voor mij!")
Wikipedia showed me that expression can be translated as "Αὐτὰ μοῦ φαίνονται κινέζικα!" with Chinese as the target language. Somewhat hypocrite? The answer is up to you.

Saturday was extremely quiet, but in short: bed, shower, talking, 'head', eating, chatting, coffee, water, mailing, tired, siesta, music, recharging. One of those days you're doing nothing because your body just doesn't feel fit. At the end of such a day, I always say to myself "tomorrow I'm going to handle it different". And I did.

One of the things I like a lot is to walk, to observe, to take a picture at places I don't know. That's what I've done on the 7th day of my week. I took the map of BCN and devided the city into 9 to 10 zones. On Sunday I viewed zone 1: my quarter near Sagrada Família. Sundays are perfect as there's not a lot of traffic, not a lot to do (in Spain shops are generally closed as well) and the city is focused on tourist activities.
With the sun on my white, freckled skin, I enjoyed!

First week at the campus of Bellaterra

Whether you choose it or not, bureaucracy is never far away.

In general, it's not that hard to go abroad with a scholarship. The international office 'tells you exactly what to do' and has it all planned. They will arrange it, "no worries"...

But sometimes, even for experienced people in bureaucratic stuff, it's not that simple and clear. Especially when 2 systems are different.

We have the UAB (old system) and Howest (new system). If this situation occurs, it suddenly gets not thát easy to get a final signature that confirms: "accepted @ UAB", "assured", "legal",...
ONE hand, ONE pen, ONE authorized person, ONE single move and some goodwill. That's all we needed! (*)

As you can imagine, bureaucracy seems to control us!

My first week mainly consisted of observing and listening. "Don't touch...", "Don't do..." :)

I am willing to accept that and as there's no real rush to be spotted, I had plenty of time to meet colleagues and see a part of the campus.

The people here are great! Friendly, helpful, polite.

Many of them speak (understandable) English and if not, they will try to. That deserves at least some respect! By doing this you're pushing your limits and it makes you also stronger in a way. It's something I learned when I was 1.5 years ago in VLC.
"Don't be shy!" & "Let them laugh!"

In which language we communicate depend mostly on the moment and subject.
If there's a rush, we might be talking in English. Pure technical conversations with Marcos are about 75% in English. But most of the time we just talk Spanish, which is an excellent way to improve myself.

There are a lot of investigations going on, by a lot of teams, involving many people.
After the first week I can tell that I mostly depend on these 3 people:

• Albert; the man that brought me in, lecturer, the responsible of the lab and many projects.
  He's also the one that takes care of all the problems that might occur during my stay.
  
(pic soon)


• Marcos; lecturer, investigator.
  This guy knows very well the pilot plants, I'll be his helping hand during the coming 4 months.
  
  


• Margot; lab technician.
  She's aware of all the technical stuff and the possibilities of the lab(s).
  
  

The campus is very big and has an excellent infrastructure. There's a stop of the FGC (Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya) inside the campus, there a train station of RENFE (Red Nacional de Ferrocarriles Españoles) next to the campus, many restaurants, shops, a cinema, a theatre, sport facilities, etc.
You name it, you have it!
It's a small city on itself with around 50.000 students and several thousands of employees.

Impresionante!

(*) The situation is more complex: we also need a "fictive course", etc.

¡Bienvenido en nuestro piso!

More or less 25 visits and 40 phone calls later, I’m living in the best prize/quality piso I’ve seen here…
YES!! It makes me feel so good to have an own spot, after all. I’m glad I didn’t give up that fast, my senses were right: it was only a matter of time, effort and endurance.

“Quality” is obvious the material ánd social part: 4 people are living here now, but 1 (Guille) is moving out on the 8th of October.
We have the French girl Cam (Camille), the Greek boy Stele (Stelios), the Argentinean girl Guille (Guillermina) and me.

On Monday I made a fast salad with cheese and some sausages. What I learned from that?
=> Always look at the date on the package!
Apparently the sausages were out-of-date and later on that night, they turned my stomach upside down. Must have been my “worst-moment” until now. ;)

Living near “la Sagrada Família” isn’t bad at all: the metro is close, lots of shops of any kind, pleasant neighbourhood. I still need to discover the places in this barrio (barrio de la Sagrada Familia (Spanish)) and whole district (distrito del Ensanche (Catalan)/district of Eixample), but everything at its time.

Carrer de la Indústria 124, 7° - 2a
08025 BARCELONA
SPAIN

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensanche
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eixample

Hunting for a 'piso'...

Everybody that goes to Spain knows how it works:
or, you look for little papers in the streets and in the 'loquotorios' (internet/telephone-pubs),
or, you surf to:
http://www.loquo.com/
http://www.kamicasa.com/
http://www.easypiso.com/
etc.

As an exception, in Barcelona there are only a few places where you can encounter those little papers and most of the announcements found at the 'loquotorios' are old.
The best way here is to surf on the WWW, to write down a couple of phone numbers, to call immediately and to arrange a visit.

All rooms are expensive, many have the size of a dog cage, but if you want to pay €400/month or more, you can find relative fast a -for Belgian norms- normal to good room in a nice flat. I didn't want to pay thát much, so I knew it could take me some time to find a room I like for more or less €350/month...

It took 7 days to be sure I had the room I liked and it took 5 more until I could enter it, so 12 days in total! Nowadays, I'm still spending my time at Kurts place. I can't wait until it's Monday, the day I can finally install myself and get a life here...! :)

It's incredible what I've seen in those days.
My requirements were: a bed, a closet, something that looks like a table (honestly: I wrote my bachelor paper in VLC on a white painted door laying on two supports...), some space between those furnitures, a shower, small kitchen/sofa, internet (neighbours, everybody needs good neighbours) and a close metro stop.

This is a summary of what I found during my search:

• no friends can visit me ("aquí es un monasterio"= this is a monastery)
• friends can only come over to 'have a coffee'
• friends can come over and spend a night @ €10/night (even for my little sister)
• no window at all
• the window is small and on the other side is... another room!
• 1.5m x 2.5m (the dog cage I was talking about)
• all of them were smokers & the flat was filled with their smoke
• available from October (played a more important roll during the first days)
• an old mommy with youngest son (27) (-> no thanks, I'm not looking for a new family)
• no desk
• no living room (was converted in another room)
• my company would be an old smoking man (trying to let me rent his stockage room)
• to far away (I would loose a lot of time by going to and coming from the campus in Bellaterra)
• bad neighbourhood (there is nothing: huge blocks, no shops, no life when it's dark)
• room of a few square meters on the 1th floor, next to the around-the-clock traffic of Gran Vía (even only beautiful girls were living in this flat (Libanese-Spanish) and Lesbian couple... hahaha)
• smelly, like it was never cleaned before
• no internet ("Internet? Wifi? Qué es?")
• a small hairy dog lives in the kitchen (dog hair all around, newspapers on the floor to catch up the poopies)
• a woman in midlife crisis trying to drag me ("Eeey guapo, que no olvidas mí numero, ;) ;) ;), bajo el precio para tí guapo,...") => HILARIOUS! :D
• no shower (only small bath)
• Chinese mom with her son: "we sleep at 10 p.m. and no visits, well, maybe for coffee"
• I was 'on the list and they would contact me'...

Mostly it was a mixtures of those singularities above. So now you'll understand maybe a little bit better why 12 days will have passed, before he encontrado mí habitación...

But I never got worried about what I've seen! It's normal here... This is, yep, Barcelona!

The best announcement was of a girl from Extremadura (Spain):

"No entiendo a esa gente que pretender pagar el piso a tu costa y encima sacar dinero y ademas poniendonte reglas absurdad que esta fuera de una convivencia, encima de putas apaleadas, me indigno cada vez que leo algunos anuncios, que buscan compañeros de piso o a la mujer de su vida?"

Meanwhile I met a girl from Paris and a boy from Munich telling me similar stories. We laughed about the things we were telling eachother.

It's part of being abroad... Another great experience!

Arrival & searching my spot

On Wednesday, the 17th of October '08 I arrived at one of the pearls of the Mediterranean Sea: BARCELONA!

The first impressions are: big (1.6 million people without the suburbs), busy (there's always traffic), €xp€nsiv€ (as expected), turistic (English, Dutch and German people are never far away), but all together a very nice place to hang around.

In short: a city that has it all!

Before my adventure can begin, I have to look for a room. Shall I live on the campus of the UAB (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, @ Bellaterra/Cerdanyola del Vallès, 20km from BCN) in a cheap student flat, in a smaller city around BCN close to both campus ánd city center or in a 'small' room in Barcelona itself?

For me the choice was easily made: the "studying in Ghent and having in room in Deinze or De Pinte"-idea is almost out of option for me. I want to see, feel and live in this city, be able to walk through its streets without worrying about train or metro connections, get to know its inhabitants, being part of it for a while.

The search for a 'piso' (apartment) was my first adventure. Meanwhile I could sleep at a friends place: thanks for the sofa-bed Kurt!