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