"Sulada"

Wicked brilliant South-West wind.. wonderful afternoon.

Photos are worth a thousands words.. so let me share some with you.

Started the day pretty early to do some work. This is the view from my "home" office.

Then we had lunch were there was a scene that reminded me of this wonderful video by Tim Minchin:

A bit tiered of irrationality we quickly moved a bit North and West and to Riactiva for what was looking like a quiet sailing afternoon.

Well... the "quiet" part become a adrenalin pumping afternoon. The South wind picked up getting to around 25 knots so I was well pumped up with my 6.9m² sail (the only one I brought with me).

I'll let you enjoy some photos now…

My gybes are getting quite better. Board is flatter through out the entire gybe, speed is mostly maintained and it feel "safe". Time to move on to duck gybes now.

We windsurfed the entire afternoon. Only the sun setting and muscles aches made us stop.

Wonderful!

Hot summer days at Egmond aan Zee

We went a bit to the North of Holand, to Egmond aan Zee, to relax and enjoy the very hot summer days that have been happening here.

The beach was crowded. It reminded me of those very hot days that sometime happen in the south of Portugal, when even the ocean looks lazy and flat.

If you follow the link in the image above and then press the small zoom in button you can have a better view of the beach. I didn't upload the full definition image, but the one at PicassaWeb is still 4096 pixels wide. The full one is 17766 pixels wide... I don't think I'm going to upload that very soon...

Serra da Lousã (the mountains)

One of the things that I have sorely miss while in Netherlands is a feature full landscape. The only beauty you can find here is man made or man arranged. Nature is allowed to grow only in a orderly fashion and I miss the chaotic growth of plants on fertile and wild soil.

In the mountains of Lousã you can find both the orderly and the wild, more of the later than the former.

A good starting point for a walk is the Castle of Lousã. From there you can follow any of the different paths up the mountains.

Starting in the semi-natural swimming pool created by the running river, a refreshing sight of free water, and climb up to the Sanctuary.

Every step providing a different view of the mountains, the sound of river always with you, echoing in the close valley.

Another possible track would take you to a traditional village (named Catarredor) but be prepared for a long and strenuous walk. We decided not to stress about it and drove to the village.

There we had a beer at Fantasia bar. A beer and a relaxing time talking the the other patrons of the bar.

On the way home we stopped at the the Quinta da Paiva / Parque biológico de Miranda do Corvo (Biologic park of Miranda do Corvo) but it was late and the ticket office was already closed. Still we managed to see some animals, some ducks and some birds of prey.

Back in the good land of Portugal

After the disappointment trip to Moulay I got to stay some days in my fatherland, my beautiful country and share those days with my dear wife. Wonderful days.

Although I had work to do at the computer (some mysterious project that will stay under the radar for a while) we had time to meet with friends, go twice to the beach where the warm air and tepid Ocean water made for a very relaxing time and visit the mountain of Lousã (east of Coimbra).

I can't actually say what did I enjoy more: the sight of a landscape that is not flat, the sound of the Ocean waves, the feel of the Sun warming the skin, the smell of the forest in the mountains, the scent of the Ocean at the beach, the people. It was all so good.

The waves were not that big but still a friend went and caught some good small but well shaped waves with his kayak.

Then, after staying the afternoon at the beach, swimming for a long time, enjoying the motion of the waves, laying down on the hot sand and talking with friends we had a wonderful dinner by the light of the big red Sun setting in the horizon.

I bet there aren't many European countries where you can comfortable (with just a t-shirt or a light sweater) have a picnic by the sea at Sunset on the first days of May.

In the next post I'll share some photos of the very luxuriant forest in the mountain of Lousã.

It should have been a lot better…

Back in Portugal after one very disappointing week at Moulay, Morocco. Disappointing for the lack of wind but also the FBC there is a bit less professional than what I expected (specially after the wonderful experience at FBC Lanzarote last year). From schedule conflicts on rented equipment, appalling bad setting of the rig, seizing of the rented equipment and sometimes just plain bad manners. When things could go wrong, they did. I might explain better in another post, although I don't really see any reason to dwell on it. Maybe I'm actually being unfair (though I can't figure how) but I really feel that I'll never again go to Moulay spot unless I have my own equipment or a rental in another place.

It's even more astonishing that things worked out so bad when my experience with everything related to Fanatic has been great: Club Mistral travel agency is wonderful and really very helpful (they managed to book a flight for me in 20 minutes, just in time for the check-in), the other Fanatic Board Centers that I know are really nice, friendly and very professional, the people I got to have contact with are just great. It has always been a pleasure to do business with all of them and I expect it will continue to be so, just not ever with Moulay as a destination.

All in all I am really happy to be back in Portugal enjoying an exceptional warm weather and spending time with my family and friends. Soon this week at Moulay will be nothing but a faded memory.

In the mean time I'll try and get to go on another Windsurf Clinic.

Quick change of plans

Last Tuesday I went to bed at night thinking that in the morning I would start a road trip from Netherlands to Portugal (more than 2000 Km, a two day trip). On Wednesday I woke up at 6:30, open my computer I searched for flights from Amsterdam to Lisbon, bough the ticked from EasyJet and 10 hours after leaving home in Netherlands I was at my home in Portugal.

That's how quick things can change when one has the possibility of choice and one of the reasons why I feel that big companies fail to steer in the current market. Managers should have the power to take decisions to change targets and ways of doing things. Standardization works only if all the products are a copy of one another and in Software each project is a individual entity.

The problem seams to be that managers higher on the echelon of command decide on a way to do things, sometimes without having any real contact with software development (sometimes they remember a project they did some decades ago) and pass that command into the middle managers. This managers, on the other hand, not only have no real power of decision but also are rewards for being complacent. Initiative is something alien to middle managers - not of their fault but of the structure where they are integrated. They spend all of their energies focusing on the wrong problems: how to fill that spreadsheet, understanding the desires of the higher managers, attempting to apply plans and ideas that have no connection with reality. Ahh!… and higher manager felt in awe with this "agile" thing so everything has to become agile. Except when it come to dealing with the higher managers. Then it's still the old method of fulfilling deadlines with half baked products.

I wonder if a big company can avoid this trap to productivity…

Marken village, the photos

Wednesday we took advantage of the now longer day to go and visit Marken. I went there by bicycle on Tuesday but this time we just took the car.

It's a wonderful place and I bet that in Summer it will be full of tourists and it will lose some of its appeal. Right now it was like going back in time. Small streets where a car can't even fit, wooden houses, flowers in pots, cats and farm animals on the side.

I took some nice photos that I you can see in this PicasaWeb album or on the following slide show (requires Adobe Flash plugin, sorry for that).

All in all a very nice place where to go and spend a couple of hours walking about. Keep in mind that visitors are not allowed to drive the car to most of the peninsula and the parking close to the village costs 4.50€. If you keep driving until the village you'll be "stuck" in the park where you'll have to pay. Better park before you actually get in the village and save the money for a pint when you're back.

I challenge you to find the word "Saudade" on a house within the village. It exists (you can check the photo) but it's not a easy find. I wonder what's the story behind a Portuguese word in a traditional Dutch village…

Hamburg, last episode

I told you in a previous post how Hamburg has some interesting street art but the official art is also present in the streets. From beautiful buildings to statues one can see about anything in the nice streets of this old but so vibrant city.

Copper statues, roofs, cupolas and other street fixings reminds us of how important the heavy industry of metal foundry and transformation is to the city and its history.

Industry is actually something that Germany seams not to have forgot and it might explain why it's such a economic power. While some other countries decided that industry was something to be done in the far east, Germany kept a healthy industrial layer. Other countries that focused on the finance markets are now getting a beating. Maybe I'm just old fashion and obtuse and don't get the wonders of the financial markets… or maybe a good balance between production, markets and laws is needed for it to work out for most people.

Downtown Hamburg is a network of commerce installation, channels and bridges. Hamburg is probably the media capital of Germany (or at least it's a very important hub). As such you can expect to find all the fancy, expensive and fashionable brands. If instead you prefer something less attention calling you can also find it among the huge amount of displays.

All in all a really nice city where I hope to visit again one of this days.

On another topic: wind forecast for the weekend was bogus. There were maybe 12 knots of wind with gusts of 15 knots. I'm am now in desperate windsurf deprivation and can hardly wait for May when I get to go to Moulay to learn how to do some proper wave sailing.

Hamburg, part II: street art

Continuing the visit to Hamburg that I started on the previous post.

One of the things that I really enjoyed in Hamburg was the huge quantity and quality of street art. From sculptures to wall painting. Vivid colors, alive images and emotional effects. What more can you ask from art?

The style, inspiration, technic of what one can find in the streets varies a lot, although some things do have some resemblance of style. I wonder if the two next pieces are from the same artist.

It's hard for me to name this as graffiti, a word that is mostly used to describe the badly done inscriptions on walls with no real insight, no deep meaning, no relevance, no art. So I prefer to name this as frescoes or paintings.

Of course I am probably completely wrong and those two paintings and they are made by two very different artists.

In one of the wall a Die Die My Darling in a possible (?) reference to the punk horror band The Misfits. It's also a great music so do enjoy it.

After seeing that the music was in my mind for quite a while…

In the end all this art form is even more temporary than the usual painting and sculptures. Most of it is done in old and abandon buildings and a city with the such dynamism as Hamburg will feel the pressure to replace those building with even more office blocks. With luck maybe the facade of those new building could integrate the art presented in the existing ones but somehow I don't believe that will happen.

Sometimes you can also find interesting advertising. Here we can see a real estate agency asking the people in the street if their house is too small, inviting them to jump into their web site in search for something new. Then the site is well layed out and easy to use (well... I'm using google translation to actually understand the site as my German is too basic for more than getting food and drinks at a bar).

I'll just end with two more frescoes that I enjoyed for different reasons.

The first one I think portraits Mahalasa, one of the eight avatars of Vishnu, that I find really nice because of the feelings when watching the painting. It bring a certain sense of harmony and relaxation that were most welcome by me. I had after all been walking for some three or four hours and resting, even just by imagining it, was well deserved.

Polytheist or even monotheist where the deity has several facets somehow feel more open to accept other people as they are. Or so it seams to me while I try to understand how can the three biggest religions that currently exist on this small planet fight so much when, to my understanding, they all have the same god as central piece of their dogma and diverge only on the messengers from that deity.

The other painting is a question: "Should I?".

It's up to us, as observers, to try and figure out what is the action that should or should not be taken and by doing so we project our own uncertainties into the drawing.

Now… Should you?

Visiting Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg

As a good friend of mine was going to present his final Engineering Diploma project at the Institut für Umwelttechnik und Energiewirtschaft, part of the Technische Universität Hamburg-Harburg, I just had to take the opportunity to pay him a visit, share a good (and I guess important) moment with him and see the second largest German city.

The drive to Hamburg (yes, I drove, I love to) was easy and relaxed. Good roads, interesting scenery (well, mostly flat fields), good music blasting in the radio and as soon as I arrived to Germany, a beautiful Sun shining in the sky. I can highlight how relevant seeing and feeling the Sun was to the general feeling of the trip. It has been months since I last saw a clear sky, totally devoid of clouds - sometimes in Amsterdam we do see a slit of blue sky, or the sun might shine for a couple of minutes, but that's it. I could actually drive without any heating and in a simple sweater. That felt sweet.

I stayed with my friends in the flat he shares with fellow students (if any of you ever reads this thanks for taking me in) and in the morning I couldn't wait to go out and walk about. We were staying in the south part of Hamburg named Harburg (Hamburg is a agglomeration of several smaller cities, a State City) and as my friend's presentation was in the afternoon I decided to stay around. Despite not being a super touristic place Harburg still has a nice feeling to it.

That evening and night were dedicated to celebrate the accomplished of my friend. Let's leave it at that…

The next day it was finally time to go and see the city of Hamburg. We (me, my friend and one of his flatmates) took the metro to the station Langungsbüken and started what would be something like a six or seven hours walking tour.

Right next to the mentioned station is a feat of beginning of XIX engineering: St. Pauli Elbe Tunnel, a tunnel bellow the Elbe river open to the public in 1911. Instead of the usual entrance and exit ramps this tunnel uses big elevators for vehicles to be lowered and raised from the tunnel. Pedestrians an bicycles can always use the stairs.

On today standards of engineering this almost 500m long and 24m beneath the surface doesn't sound like much but think about it: it was build more than one hundred years ago, when the technology and knowledge were a far distant ancestors of what they are now. The technic to build tunnels those days was by pressurising the under construction tunnel in order to prevent water from leaking in. Workers would be submitted to a high air pressure and then at the end of their shift would simple return to normal one atmosphere. This lead to some of the workers feeling sick by what we now know as the decompression sickness.

After walking the length of the tunnel, reaching the surface and walking around the tunnel entrance building one is greeted with a great view of the lower city. I took sometime to take a set of photos that latter at home a stitched as a panoramic view.

As you can see the weather had turn gray. Low clouds were blocking the Sun and in the end of the day it actually started to rain. Well… I wasn't complaining. The effects of the previous exposure to Sun light were still being felt. Or maybe it was the previous night partying. Or a mix or both.

Anyway, this is a already long post and my TODO list is calling. On a next post I'll continue with the story of visiting Hamburg and the reason why getting to Hamburg is a lot better than leaving it.

Traveling in South Holland: Delft

Long time without updates but so many thing to write about... several posts my be the best idea as it's easier to tag and keep the organization.

In the end of February I traveled to South Holland to visit the sea coast and the University of Delft. Let me start with this latest: the Technische Universiteit Delft one of the three universities in Netherlands that provide engineering degrees (the other two being TU Eindhoven and University of Twente). I cannot state much about the courses, teachers, students or studies but I can say that the campus looks really nice with inspiring buildings and open spaces that invite for casual fraternization (if the weather so permits).

Above is a picture of the Aula Congress Center reminds me of the Alpha Vehicles of the TV series Space 1999. For a old time science fiction addicted that just great.

The library is the piece de resistence. I don't have pictures from inside the building but google is at your service.

The conic shape you see above ground is actually a light cupola, providing natural light to the interior of the library. Inside the building is even nicer than outside. It's worth the visit just to see the library. Staying inside and working is a privileged and I wonder if the people that are working, studying or simply staying there realize that.

The Civil Engineering faculty looks like a extended Sand Crawler from Star Wars.

The Faculty Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (yes, they are all under the same roof. Must be interesting…) building is the tallest and imposing building of the campus. I wonder what message did they want to send?

There are several more faculties at the university, but this were the one that I remember.

Of course the university campus is worth the visit but so is the city. I'll share only a couple of photos taken with my phone on a gray dark day.

Photography value close to zero but at least it shows that Delft has more than just the University Campus.