Life is a journey... enjoy the ride

Newlywed thoughts...

2008-11-08T12:51:00.007+02:00

Yes now I'm married... happily married I must say ;) and after a couple of months with my new status in Facebook I've been getting the same question over and over again about "how does it feels to be married?" and "is it what you were expecting?" so finally I decided to answer that question here to everyone interested about it, and why not? also too keep good memories that will put a smile on my face when I decide to read this blog again in fifty years from now.

Marriage is way more than just having a nice party with a huge cake, a honey moon in Paris including lots of pictures all over Facebook...l at least in our case, our married life started two years before signing the paper at church and having a nice party in the old town, it all started when we decided to commit to each other, to work as a team in order to accomplish common and personal goals by supporting each other, complementing each other's personalities, but at the same time respecting our personal spaces, needs and interests and understanding that nobody is perfect and that we both have flaws but we still love each other despite of all that.

All those descriptions are way too abstract for most of the people that have never done this before, so a real example may be more important than all I've said before... marriage is not only about a diamond ring but more about waking up early to cook breakfast for each other to make it on time at the office, about sweeping the living room while the other is doing the laundry, about listening to each others stories about their jobs even though she may not understand java and he may not have a clue about how to explain direct and indirect object pronouns, but not everything is like that, it's also about remembering and being happy about why the two of you are together, about going to the theater on weekends and playing chess during the week, traveling to new places together and enjoying drinks with friends every now and then...

And at this point comes to my mind to ask you back, is this what you were expecting from a newlyweds couple? is this what you had in mind about marriage? feel free to share your comments, and if you don't I still hope this post will be useful for someone out there ;)

Let things flow...

2008-10-23T20:18:00.004+03:00

It has been a long time since I wrote my last post, honestly I lost the interest on posting what was happening in my life, not because I didn't want to share but because I thought it was pointless to share it.

A few months ago I decided to work more on the technical knowledge related to my profession, and who is interested on reading about that here????? no one! well at least that what I thought until a couple of hours ago... now I understand I was wrong, I chose the bad place to do the wrong thing, that's it!

So I just decided to create a new blog to talk about technical stuff, java, IT stuff and so on, and I will keep this one for the main purpose I created it on the first place, to write about the things going through my mind, simpled, complicated, short, long, whatever comes and however it comes it will be here, and I'll apply the wise principle of "let things flow"....

Ferbar: Autonomous mobile robot control system

2008-05-31T20:55:00.008+03:00

The main problem was to create an autonomous control system for a mobile robot in order for him to move from point A to point B avoiding obstacles and making all the decisions without the intervention of a human being.

To solve this problem we used an ultrasonic sensor on top of step-by-step engine in order to take samples from the area and the obstacles surrounding the robot. This information was sent to the motherboard on the robot with a DSL Linux distribution on a usb drive (to avoid using a delicate HDD on our rover robot).

Ferbar was running on that machine, its main requirement is a 1.4 JDK or higher and some libraries included on the zip file, there is a tricky configuration of the comm.jar that allows the software to sent the information of each movement using the serial port, but the details are explained on a txt install file.

The core of the brain is using a SOM neural network trained by JKam. The application includes a simulator with a 2D map on which you can set obstacles of different sizes and shapes and then you can set the point A and B on the map and test the performance of the robot with the current neural network. It's also possible to change the neural network being used.

The software includes two other control systems, one of them allows the user to preset the path that is going to be used by the robot, this is useful in case if you want to take the robot to a presentation and you already know the place and you know the moves you want him to do.

The third type of control allows the user to have live control of the robot, basically is a sort of remote control, this ones is pretty useful in case the scenario is too complex for the neural network and you want to take over the control of the robot.

Ferbar can save paths previously used in case you need to reuse them later, it is also possible to save and reuse training scenarios.

There is a panel not being used right now, it's the vision panel, it was supposed to show the view of a camera on the robot, but usb for java a couple wasn't so popular as it is right now.

Well one more time, if someone is interested on using it just let me know and I will gladly send you the files.

Kohonen Neural Networks and JAVA

2008-05-17T09:53:00.005+03:00

Well as you can see on the title of the post, I decided to talk a bit more about what I do 3/4 of my day: JAVA, hopefully to share the problems I have everyday will help somebody else and also I'm pretty sure they will also help me.

My whole Java career started 3 years ago just by coincidence, I was in charge of the development of the "brain" of a mobile robot and the best way to have an OS independent software is using Java, so I ended up buying a Java book and started messing around with my computer and Netbeans.

Anyway, to make a long story short I developed two softwares to create the robot's brain, the requirement was that the robot could be able to move from position A to position B making all the decisions by himself in order to avoid obstacles and reach its destination.

To accomplish this goal I decided to use Self Organizing Maps also called Kohonen Networks, a self-organizing artificial neural network that selects the winner neuron by using the euclidean distance.

The learning process for the SOM is to make that different areas of the network can be activated by similar input patterns, and this resembles a lot to the way our brains work when we receive auditory or visual information and different areas of our brain generate the response.

JKam is the name of the software I developed for this task, its goal is to make easier the training process for Kohonen Networks and it has the following features:

It allows you to define the structure of the map (Input Neurons, X Neurons and Y Neurons)
Bubble and Gaussian neighborhood functions
Exponential, Linear or Inverse Time learning factor functions
Training variables such as amount of steps, radius, training sets and initial learning factor rate.
It also allows you to save and re-use training sets and neural networks on an XML format.

I stopped working with this software a couple of years ago but I think it can be pretty useful on different fields so if anyone is interested on using it, just send me an email and I will gladly send you the files.

Well that's it, on the next post I'll talk about the software using a SOM trained with JKam, the brain of the robot: Ferbar.

Imagine...

2008-04-29T18:17:00.004+03:00

It has been while since the last time I wrote something here... I don't have an excuse, of course I can say that I have been busy working on my office for 8 hours and then at home a few hours more, but that's just the easiest way out of most of the problems on our daily lives.

Anyway today instead of watching another chapter of Seinfeld while coding I decided to take sometime to write, and yeap a lot of things have happened to me since the last post, I went to a football game with a snowstorm and -5 degrees, I had a bbq on the beach with -1 degrees, I became vegetarian, I traveled a couple of times to Poland and Sweden, I organized a protest against our crazy Venezuelan president, I started jogging again and decided to participate in Marathon and the final story is that I had great time with my friends on my birthday...

But today I want to write about something special for me... yesterday I received my birthday present: a piano. For those of you who don't know me and also for those who think that they know me but now are a bit surprised, I have wanted to play the piano since almost 3 years from now, but again as I said on the beginning of this post, an excuse is the easiest way out of any problem so I decided to stop procrastinating a special goal in my life and start working on it!

So after having a beer on the old town square I to enjoy a the perfect weather that we have in Tallinn right now, I went with Chris to the Kaubamaja and bought my first piano

And after 15 minutes installing everything on Linux I was following my first piano lesson, Imagine from John Lennon :)

This is not about the shoes...

2008-01-30T22:40:00.000+02:00

It's being a long time since I wrote my last post, I have been quite busy traveling in December and working in January, but tonight I found a few minutes to focus on my blog....

I saw this tv add the other day and basically I found it really good... for some people this is just a tv add, but I guess Michael Jordan has influenced my life in a good way since I was very young, anyway here it goes:

It's not about the shoes

It's about knowing where you're going

Not forgetting where you started

It's about having the courage to fail,

Not breaking when you are broken

Taking everything you've been given,

And making something better
It's about work, before glory and what's inside of you,
Is doing what they say you can't

It's not about the shoes, It's what you do in them

It's about being who you were born to be.

Become Legendary

And well maybe it's just a tv add but I chose to take it more seriously and use it in my life, I guess that's the big difference... here you can take a look:

Become legendary

Santka Lucia in Kalmar

2007-12-18T12:44:00.000+02:00

This was my second trip to Kalmar and this time besides getting a new job challenge for year 2008 I also had the opportunity to watch a Swedish Christmas tradition, Santa Lucia. It is suppose to happen every 13^th of December and it is related to the Sicilian Saint Lucia for some unknown reasons, at least no one in the office knew why, and actually it doesn't make sense at all because the Swedish are mostly protestan.

Anyway the tradition is that the girls from school dress up in white and they go singing around the town with candles on their hands and there is one girl representing Saint Lucia and the difference is that she has the candles on her head. I was in the office and they came to visit us and of course I took my camera and recorded the moment, take a look…

Message from a bottle...

2007-12-01T14:19:00.000+02:00

This is my first week on Tallinn after officially moving from Tartu and today I woke up feeling that I still don't have a place in the world.

I feel that because my clothes are still in the suitcase, and they are there because I'm expecting to find a new place pretty soon, or at least that's what I thought when I arrived here one week ago, but today I decided to sit down on the floor and unpack everything...

After organizing some of my stuff here it looks better (at least for me), but there is still one big challenge left, the kitchen...

My roommate it's Indian and he has been living and cooking spicy Indian food for more than two years on that kitchen, so you can smell all kinds of spices, and you see the colors of the food in every dish, pot, shelf or drawer.

...now you can understand the challenge. But after stopping for a minute thinking if I really wanted to continue, I looked up on the wall at my roommate's poster and read this:

God's Gift

I asked for strength
and God gave me difficulties to make me
strong

I asked for wisdom
and God gave me problems to solve

I asked for prosperity
and God gave me brawn and brain to work

I asked for courage
and God gave me dangers to overcome

I asked for favours
and God gave me opportunities

I received nothing I wanted
and everything I needed

My prayers has been answered

What can I say? Just put some good music on your ears and enjoy the ride of life ;)

The best movie ever…

2007-11-25T12:28:00.000+02:00

I am not a movie fan, as a matter of fact I have to think two or three times before sitting a couple of hours in front of the TV, but last week in Kalmar I spent one night alone in the apartment, so I went to a small fast food restaurant near the place and bought a “Chicken Pasta Salad”, to give you an idea about it, picture a big bowl with five hundred grams of cheese, tomato, lettuce and chicken, then with everything ready I sat on the living room with my laptop and decided to watch “Jerry Maguire”.

Yeap the best movie ever, at least that’s what I think :P the guy is on the top and everybody loves him, he has money, ladies and a great job, then he starts doing what he feels is good and he ends up on the bottom, after that he spends the rest of the movie fixing problems and in between he finds love and a new meaning for his life.

I just love the idea of someone fighting and living for what he really believes, even though that means losing part of the comfort zone that everyone likes. I think we should all sit down at least once in our lives and write down our own mission statement, not a memo, a mission statement (as Jerry says on the movie) about what we believe, what we like and don’t like and what we really want to do in this world, without caring about what everybody thinks and finally losing the ability to bullshit, and maybe then if we truly fight for our mission statement we’ll become great, “Hanging our balls out there”.

Anyway, it’s a great movie and after watching it many times I never get tired of it, and now to close this post I will leave here the best phrase of the movie by Jerry’s mentor, the great Dicky Fox:

“Hey I don’t have all the answers… in life, to be honest, I’ve failed just as much as I’ve succeeded but I love my wife, I love my life and I wish you my kind of success”

Have fun ;)

Trip to Sweden...

2007-11-25T10:06:00.000+02:00

So after an unlucky airplane trip I managed to make it here, Kalmar, a small city at the south eastern coast of Sweden and the main office of my new project. Let me tell you a bit about the trip:

Checking in Tallinn is always quick and is the airport in which I have been treated better so far, they even told me that my passport is the most original one they have seen there :P ironically Maiquetia’s airport (the one in Caracas) is the worst one in the list, in this case they even asked me to sang the Venezuelan national anthem to probe that I was not lying about my nationality, but as I read from a friend’s nickname: shit happens :P

After one hour across the frozen sea we made it to Stockholm and oh my God you must have guts to be an airplane pilot. We were about to land and I was wondering “where is the runway?” because all I could see was some clouds on the wing, then all of the sudden the clouds disappear and one second later the airplane was on the ground, and in that moment I noticed how easy is my job seated in front of a laptop 8 hours a day, compared to that pilot landing a 50ton airplane at 200km/h through the clouds.

Arlanda airport (Stockholm)… is beautiful and as the matter of fact it doesn’t look like and airport. The place is huge and this time it’s decorated for Christmas with big green and red rings hanging from the roof, unfortunately the luggage belt was broken and there was a looooong queue to check in and since I was going to take a domestic flight to Kalmar I had no other choice but to enjoy the queue.

Kalmar airport, before continuing let me remind you that Kalmar has approximately 60.000 habitants, ok now you can Imagine the size of the airport, I have seen houses bigger than that :P but on the other hand it has a Swedish touch that just some images can explain, anyway I took pictures of the place and you can take a look on my picasa.

I didn’t had the chance to withdraw money in Arlanda because of the queue so I was expecting to do it on this airport or at least to exchange money, but the place didn’t anything like that, lucky me that Swedish people love cards just as much as I do (I hate cash) and I could pay the taxi with the card.

Everything looks in order in this town except for the fact that there are no taxis! So I waited along with fifteen other passengers our chance to take one of the four or five available taxis on the place. After waiting for ten minutes an Iraqi driver chose me between the Swedish people, probably to have a chance to speak with somebody about the problems of having a life abroad. The guy’s pronunciation was awful, so it was kind of hard to establish a conversation with him, but now I know that in Iraq Chavez is respected and they would like to have him as president, I told the driver that we hate him and many Venezuelans would be happy to send him as a gift to Iraq if they want him over there. I heard that in India they also like Chavez but I’ll confirm this with my Polish-Indian source (Eliza) and probably we can also send him there as a gift for a couple of years.

Back on the taxi, the chat was nice and gave me a different point of view of the life in Iraq and also from Sweden if you are a foreigner, but the guy decided to take me to the wrong address (I noticed this a few minutes later) even though the freaking taxi had a GPS. Once there I decided to call my contact in Kalmar and the new surprise was that my mobile is not able to call or send sms in Sweden. No mobile, no internet and an empty street, what would you do? I decided to walk a bit and find somebody alive that can guide me to a solution. I found two elderly talking in a street, one of them knew some words in English and after explaining him the situation he told me that I was on the wrong address and gave me a ride to the right place, despite he lives on the other side of the town.

Before living me there I asked him to call my contact to pick me up on the entrance of the building, but he didn’t have a mobile. I was not going to stay there waiting for something to happen, so I stopped a girl entering the building and kindly asked her to make the call for me, finally she managed to talk with Victor, a guy from Netherlands living on the company’s apartment in Kalmar, and Victor explained her that the address they gave me in Tallinn was wrong and I was in another street but he came to pick me up and after a weird evening I was having some rest on my new bed…

Now I’m on Arlanda Airport again, this time waiting for the airplane back to Tallinn, and after five days in Sweden I can say that the people is really nice here, if I told you before that a lot of people speaks English in Estonia I can say that almost everyone here speaks English so that makes it easier if you are a tourist. This is my second visit to the country and it’s different from what I use to imagine when I was in Venezuela, a lot of blonde tall people with snow covering everything, well I can tell you is not like that, there are more blondes in Estonia and here you will see many people with dark hair.

I love food and they took my out for lunch every day in Kalmar and every time they asked which kind of food I wanted to eat I said the same thing: Swedish food! Come on! I am not going to visit Sweden to eat Italian food, anyway the first day I went for lunch with the “Chivos”, in Venezuela we call Chivo (goat) to somebody important in the company. We ate Swedish fish with potatoes and lingonberrys, tasty and very good, it’s not common for me to have something sweet with the main dish but anyway it was nice and it seems to be popular in dishes here. The next day I tried another dish which was basically a big fried pancake with big pieces of bacon and again lingonberrys (Raggmunk med fläsk), it’s easy to imagine that is not very healthy but it won’t kill you if you eat it once in a while although the guys in the office eat it every week.

The architecture is another thing I noticed and the difference between Eastern Europe and Scandinavia is quite obvious in the colors and the types of buildings around the city, I took a walk across Kalmar to take some pictures but unfortunately I spent the whole day working and I only have pictures in the evening but at least they will give you an idea of what I am talking about, anyway I think I am coming back on two weeks and probably I will stay for the weekend and then I will do a better job ;)

Snow and a life between ice...

2007-11-12T17:57:00.000+02:00

So the snow is here and it is for a loooooooooooooooong time.

The city is white and the temperature is getting lower and lower and now my way to the office is under snowing skies and I come back home under dark but also snowing skies and I feel like a kid enjoying everything ;)

I have reached the point in which -2 degrees is not coooooooooooold anymore and I will read this post in two or three months and I'll remember the good warm -2 degrees days. Today they told me in the office that this is the perfect time to have snow fights and snowmans cause below -5 the snow is frozen and it will look like sand, so I expect to have some snowman made by me soon and of course you will know about it.

It's funny now before going out I putt on my usual Caribbean clothes and then I start to build a shelter on top of it, starting with the priceless magical winter jacket, gloves made of wool or something different than leather because I don't want to take the skin of a poor animal to feel warm, scarf (actually I don't have this one but I'm pretty I will need soon), a hat because you can lose 70% of body heat through the head (thanks for the tip Asia ;) ) and my Rambo boots which I bought in Venezuela to do some hiking but never had the chance to really use them until now, and after all that preparation I can go out for walk a fall down on the street completely protected from the cold weather :P

On my way to Raatuse (home) while walking down the bridge I almost fell down because there was ice on the floor, I ended up skying down the bridge because it seemed more safe and funnier than doing it really slow :P and then I wondered how a poor old lady can walk through these places without getting hurt and the fact is that a lot of them break their legs or hips on winter.

You know, some people are afraid of spiders others of snakes and others of heights, well in my case is breaking something in my body. Why? well I used to play basketball everyday (literally) and I broke one finger (I needed surgery for that one and still is not working very well) and sprained badly both ankles several times, and each one of them created some psychological damage on me.

I am pretty sure I will fall sooner or later, so I will focus on doing it nicely, that means without breaking anything that's attached to my body, anyway I'll keep you posted ;)

Loneliness...

2007-11-10T19:56:00.000+02:00

Shocking word right? Usually we associate this with something wrong but is not always like that, all of us have felt it before and we will feel it again in a future and in my case I just felt it a couple of hours ago after walking through the city center on my way back home.

I don't feel bad or anything like that and it is not related to me moving 14.000km away from my previous life. It is something that happened here, in Caracas and in Barquisimeto and that is not necessarily related to have people around you, I just think is a state of the mind and body at certain moment... but every time I feel it I try to see the bright side of it and today for example I decided to write about this.

Loneliness may sound bad but it gives you time to think about yourself and the world that surrounds you, it is also good to get to know what you like and what you don't like because everything is up to you in that moment.

I think I felt like this a few times in Caracas since it was my first time out of my hometown in a big, dangerous and stressful city like Caracas, but I learned so much in those moments, and all those things are really useful for me right now and I am pretty sure I will also use them in a future...

It comes to my mind one time I was inside one of those buses in Caracas on my way home after work, a lot of people in the bus, 6pm, huge traffic jams as usual there, everyone is dirty because of sweating the entire day and all of the sudden I started to feel really sad and lonely in the middle of the chaos... I stopped and took a good look around and saw the posters on the city and the places and the people... and right there I thought that it was my choice to feel good or bad at any point of my life, and it is up to me to see the bright side of each situation... and at that moment I chose to enjoy the music in my ears from my mp3 player, the people in the bus and the view of the city and I felt happy controlling what it was supposed to be a bad evening.

Right now I keep doing it, every time I start to feel sad I analyze the situation, I take a look around, I hear the music in my ears and everything is fixed, I feel happy again walking along the river, looking at the lights on the old town and the snow falling on my face and then I thank God because of everything...

A regular IT project...

2007-11-07T14:53:00.000+02:00

Snow...

2007-11-06T19:46:00.000+02:00

For the first time in more than a decade I see snow, yeap is just frozen water but it brings this nice feeling to everyones life and a nice bright touch to the city.

I was there on my seat inside the airplane when all of the sudden I saw something white through the window and then again some other piece of white land, I wasn't expecting snow on this time of the year (or ever according to my previous experience) so my first impression is that the place was really weird, then the airplane was flying lower and lower and I realized that everything was covered with snow.

Right now we have something between -1 and -5 degrees and I am glad to tell that I am not the only one feeling cold here, my roommates also thinks this is cold and they are Europeans.

I am just trying to get used to this because it is just starting, the real cold weather comes in February and then we'll have -25 degrees. First 15 was cold, then 10, then 5, now I miss the 5 degrees weather because at least you go for a walk without feeling pain :P

But as I told you before, I am happy here enjoying all the experiences and I am pretty sure I won't forget this one...

Warsaw trip

2007-11-05T19:00:00.000+02:00

Hello everyone I wrote this while traveling last week to Warsaw...

Ok today’s new thing: Tallin’s Airport! yeap I am traveling to Warsaw for a week, I will visit Mary and we are going to the Apocalyptica concert next Saturday :P you may be asking yourself how did he got one free week in his job? They fired him? Well nope, none of them, I didn’t sale my soul to the devil neither I just asked for five days and of course I will be working on Saturdays until the end of my life… actually four more days (I already worked last Saturday).

Anyway I am happy to visit Warsaw, I don’t know why but I really like that city my hypothesis is that I have good memories everywhere there and was the first European city in which I had the chance to live in, I went to many museums, walked a lot through the streets, went to Palaces and historic places, I had parties, met a lot of people, had my first European hair cut and tried several types of beers.

Right now I am in gate number five with a bunch of people waiting to get inside the airplane that is going to take us there…

... now I am back and this time in the LOT Airlines airplane at about 8Km above the sea level and according to the captain flying over Lithuania, and in my curious mind I am wondering why do we a cliché about good looking stewardess? I am not a frequent flyer but since I took the airplane in Barquisimeto I flew six times through Venezuela, Germany, Sweden, Finland and now Poland and I have never seen a good looking stewardess, it’s the same with nurses, I don’t remember one beautiful nurse in my life and I am from Venezuela! We are supposed to have gorgeous ladies everywhere, so my conclusion right now is that the cliché only exist because they are wearing nice uniforms… aaaaanyway we’re about to land in a few minutes and the stewardess wants me to turn off this…

… Ok this is me again now on another airplane this time on my way back to Estonia, I spent one really really good week in Warsaw and of course I was way too busy to sit down a few minutes to write something in my blog.

I am going to start saying this: I love Warsaw :), I always have a good time there because of the many places to visit there, friends and of course my girlfriend :P I went to new parks and squares and restaurants and also to same old places like the Pizza Hut in the center of the city or the old town and the Pierogeria (Pierogi restaurant).

This week we had the Halloween Party and Asia prepared a party at the flat with a lot of people, she was wearing a bumble bee costume like the ones in the No Rain video from Blind Melon, in my case I don’t have many options here so I took my Cardenales de Lara baseball shirt and dressed as a Regetonero-Baseball player-Malandro, and I was even wearing a diamond earring and some jewelry on my neck, and after eight beers (0.5L each one) I had a good time there, and the party was so good that even the Europeans were dancing really good, you can take a look at picasa if you want to check the details ;)

In Poland the first day of November is the Dead People’s Day and (almost) everything is closed that day because everyone visits the cemetery, is impressive, we went to the Wilanow cemetery at the south side of the city and the place was full of people bringing candles and flowers to their relatives and the place was full of these stuff, there is also a video about this in picasa.

Something we were expecting since we arrive to Europe is the winter time change, this event happened last Monday, right now Warsaw has a +5 hours difference with Barquisimeto and +6 with Tartu (instead of +6 and +7), but the funny thing is that nobody told us that, so Mary went to work on Monday at 7 instead of showing up there at 8, of course nobody was there. But the scariest thing about this time change is that our lives changed in two or three days, why? Well, you may think that living in Europe is hard because of the language, or because of the cold winter, or because you are away from your family, or because you are a foreigner, let me tell you that for me and Mary the worst thing is that we don’t have sun anymore! Or at least we have less sun right now because is setting at 16.30…

Sorry the airplane was about to land so I took a long break to pick up my luggage, buy some chocolate, take the bus from the airport to the bus station in Tallinn, have “lunch” (a really crappy hamburger) and right now I am on the bus on my way to Tartu.

The time is 16.38 and as I was telling you in the last paragraph in this moment the sun is setting and it looks like 18.40 in Venezuela, when we noticed that last Sunday it was shocking :S you feel like it is really late and that the day is ending and you should be on the bed in a couple of hours when actually you have half of the day left, yeap this is a cultural, weather or geographic shock, any of the words can apply right now.

But despite all the bad things you can imagine, add to the list that your skin gets soooooooooo dry that you must use creams to have a normal life, because of the cold and dry wind your lips will break and you will have blood in your mouth, the beautiful snow can be very slippery and many people break their legs because of this, despite all these stuff I am enjoying the experience a lot! Everything is new and after 24 years in the sunny Caribean it was the right time for a change ;)

If you want to see the pictures click here

Helping animals in Venezuela

2007-10-25T20:35:00.000+03:00

The last few days I have been involved with PETA trying to help at least by signing petitions and sending information to friends about the actions around the world to help animals, while doing this I was contacted by a Venezuelan friend who was really interested in doing something about it, but besides that she also wanted to help and get active in Venezuela, that made me really happy because at least one person is interested in taking actions in my country and of course I did some research on the internet to find information about something like PETA but in my country, it seems that we have APROA (Asociación Pro Defensa de los Animales) and they have been really active for many years, the website has a lot of information about campaigns, previous accomplishments, current complaints, some legal help, lost pets and foster animals.

Now to close this post I will publish the info also in Spanish to my Venezuelan friends:

Hey saludos a todos ;)

Varias personas me respondieron el mail sobre el maltrato de animales con interes de unirse a la campana en contra de estas practicas y ademas me preguntaron por organizaciones similares a PETA pero en Venezuela para participar y colaborar, esto me parecio mucho mejor ya que podemos ayudar en nuestro pais para acabar con esto y luego de enviarle un mail a la gente de PETA y recibir respuesta hoy, termine en este website:

http://www.aproa.org.ve/

De la Asociación Pro Defensa de los Animales, en el website pueden encontrar correos en caso de querer contactarlos, informacion sobre las activiades, pueden realizar denuncias, recibir apoyo legal, hay informacion sobre campanas y pues todo lo necesario para hacer algo al respecto, espero les sirva de ayuda a aquellos que quieren participar y no solo ver lo que pasa y quejarse de las cosas malas que pasan en el pais... y de nuevo como decia Einstein:

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8jw-ifqwkM

Saludos

KFC secret ingredient: Cruelty!!!

2007-10-19T20:16:00.000+03:00

I used to eat a lot in KFC when I was working in Caracas, it was the only place to go while working in a zone full of factories, but I will put KFC in the list with Snickers, Twix and Mars and now I can say I WON'T EAT KFC FOOD ANYMORE!!

And if you want to know why I took this decision please read the following email that PETA sent me and take a look at the video on the following link: http://www.kentuckyfriedcruelty.com/

Dear Luis,

When the ghosts and goblins stop by your house this Halloween, why not leave them with a lasting impression about KFC? Carve pumpkins that illuminate the words "Boycott KFC" for the large crowds to see, or dress up as a chicken with a "Broken Wings and Legs" sign. If you'll be busy giving out candy to trick-or-treaters, why not hand out "Evil Colonel Sanders" or "I Am Not a Nugget" stickers along with a delicious vegan treat? If dressing up or trick-or-treating isn't your style, there are many other things you can do this Halloween to get the word out about KFC's cruelty to chickens.

Share Pam Anderson's KFC exposé so that people can see the horrors endured by chickens raised and killed for KFC's buckets. E-mail friends and family members to ask them to check out KentuckyFriedCruelty.com and stop supporting the gruesome torture of chickens.

And remember this:

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8jw-ifqwkM

Visit to Tallinn

2007-10-14T18:58:00.000+03:00

This weekend I took my new jacket and my bag and went to the capital of Estonia... Tallinn, Kike (Carlos Botero), an AIESECer from Caracas was waiting for me there. He has been living in that city more than one year and was one of my first contacts with this country when I was applying for internship a few months ago, now after many months talking through Skype, finally got the chance to meet him.

Traveling through Estonia as I told you in previous post is pretty fast, taking a bus from Tartu to Tallinn takes 2 hours, that makes it really appropriate if you need to go buying some weird stuff or just having fun in a different place every weekend.

I arrived at 2pm and as soon as I was out the bus I felt the big amount of Russians that live there, plus you can also feel the diversity in the city with people from Asia, South America and Europe everywhere, and of course many malls and a lot of movement in the streets.

Something that amaze me from Tartu and now also from Tallinn is that, even though these cities are small, I mean only 100.000 and 400.000 people each one of them, you can see people and cars moving everyday at every moment like in a big city.

Tallinn surprise me with its size, the Old Town is beautiful and I also had the chance to eat in a restaurant there, in this place we watched Estonia playing against England for the Euro cup qualifications, but they suck really bad playing football and the whole country knows it, but at least means that I can watch some good teams playing here. There are also many concerts here like Aerosmith, Elton John and Apocalyptica to name a few.

Besides Kike, in this walk through the Old Town we also met Gabriel (Bolivia), Kaida (Estonia), Peter (Russia) and Breno (Brasil) who is living in the same apartment as Kike. Gabo and Kike have been living here one and two years respectively so they almost feel Estonians and they a lot of experience in how to survive the minus twenty five winter here.

After a nice Estonian breakfast and a quick look to an outdoor marketplace, that remind me the "Avenida 20" in Barquisimeto, we went to Kikes office in Skype, yeap the main Skype office in the world and of course it is exactly what I was expecting, they gave us free headphones and stickers on the entrance, a very modern, clean and clear decoration, a lot of entertainment to boost your creativity, for example a Sauna, pool table, Wii and of course flat TVs and the opportunity to call wherever you want in the world for free. Nice way to keep you happy in an office with forty different nationalities.

Unfortunately my time there was about to finish and didn't have the chance to visit more places, but since it is just two hours away I am pretty sure I'll be back soon ;)

I putted the pictures here...

Eating arepas in Estonia!

2007-10-08T20:15:00.001+03:00

Yeap that's it, Arepas, the thing I was missing so much from Venezuela, the main meal every day in breakfast, lunch and dinner in my country. I am so lucky that the Russians also use corn flour (I don't know why) and this weekend doing some shoppings in a mall near my place I found the magic flour...

Of course is not our beloved Harina P.A.N but what the hell I am 14.000Km away from a "Central Madeirense" (popular Venezuelan marketplace) and just because of that it taste like heaven :)

The taste is not exactly like Harina P.A.N. it is more like the other brand (I don't remember right now) in Venezuela that we had to buy when it was really hard find good products. Besides I had to fry the arepas because the pan has a really crappy Teflon so everything gets stucked there.

I had my typical Sunday breakfast with some tuna with sweet corn, sour milk (creama de leche pero un pelo inspida), ham and cheese. And if you are wondering why the arepas look like something else, well is because the corn flour is not the same so basically it was really hard to keep the rounded shape in the pan while frying them.

And now for all of you in some other country different than Venezuela that may had never seen an arepa before, here is the way they should look and besides the real Harina P.A.N and some butter.

And to close this post I'll show you the thing I'm going eat on my next trip to Barquisimeto, the fabulous and tasty Arepa de Carretera (road Arepa)!!!!

Para reflexionar un rato...

2007-10-04T15:13:00.000+03:00

Sorry international friends, I have to post this one in Spanish because is easier for me to express what I feel about the problems in my country this way...

A mi gente en Venezuela, tanto mis panas que apoyan el gobierno como mis panas que no, les envio esto para que piensen un rato y se hagan ustedes estas preguntas:

Lo que esta pasando en el pais es normal?

La economia va por buen camino?

Cosas basicas como la educacion y la seguridad han mejorado?

Se los envie a unos cuantos, espero que al menos a uno o dos no les de flojera responder esto y al menos puedan leerlo hasta el final, porque desde donde yo estoy y con la realidad que estoy viviendo ahora me doy cuenta que las cosas no se ven nada bien en mi pais y me pregunto en que esta pensando la gente que apoya lo que esta pasando alla.

Leer el periodico y ver noticias de un chamo de 20 anos que puede ser tu pana, tu hermano tu primo o algun conocido con 14 tiros a las 12.30 del dia en el centro de mi ciudad? que encontrar leche, azucar y alimentos basicos sea una odisea? ni si quiera nombro los hospitales y el estado en el que estan o la educacion con escuelas, liceos y universidades cada vez mas por el piso, que demonios es un pueblo sin educacion, alimentos basicos y seguridad???

Cuando le pregunto a la gente de Rusia y Estonia como era la vida hace 20 anos con la Union Sovietica, lamentablemente lo que veo son similitudes con lo que se esta convirtiendo mi pais, todos eran iguales y en ese momento todo era de todos, suena bonito y conocido no? pero cual era la defnicion del gobierno para el termino TODO: 1 tipo de camisa, de comida, de tv y de cada cosa que quisieras, por ejemplo como todo estaba nacionalizado incluyendo los carros, para comprar un carro el papa de Immu (un pana estonio) espero 20 anos (hasta tener 44 anos) para tener su primer carro, y sonar con viajar fuera del pais (o los aliados del pais) era algo imposible, era mas dificil conseguir la visa de la Union Sovietica (hasta eso necesitaban) que la de otro pais, Dasha una amiga rusa me conto que ver una Coca cola en esa epoca era algo sorprendente y ver comiquitas de tom y jerry solo podian hacerlo en una cinta de vhs de contrabando, porque el canal del pueblo no permitia eso... la lista continua y si les parece esto similar a algunos patrones que se estan viendo en Venezuela pues entonces deberiamos preocuparnos TODOS.

Ahorita estoy viviendo en Estonia, un pais que logro salir del desatre que era la Union Sovietica y algo similar a lo que los pobres cubanos se tienen que calar (la Cuba que tanto adora nuestro Gobierno). Estonia tuvo su reforma constitucional (si algo similar a la que vamos a tener nosotros) en 1992 y desde hace 10 anos este pais a tenido un crecimiento economico superior al 10% y ha sido el pais de Europa con mayor crecimiento economico en los ultimos anos... gracias a esas reformas. Lo preocupante es que luego de que Mary (mi novia) recibiera en Polonia material politico relacionado con las reformas ( a pesar pedir especificamente material cultural) y me contara un poco y luego yo investigara al respecto, nuestras reformas son totalmente opuestas a las que hubo aqui en Estonia, aqui se quizo privatizar las empresas porque se comprobo que nacionalizadas no funcionan y ahora en mi pais hasta las carnicerias pueden ser nacionalizadas, aqui se cambiaron leyes para reducir impuestos y en general promover la inversion internacional y la creacion de empresa en el pais, y en mi pais se espantan a los inversores tratando de eliminar la propiedad privada, nacionalizando todo y aliandose a Iran y Cuba. Por ultimo, el cambio aqui en Estonia donde ahora se ven Mercedes-Benz, Audis y BMW, oferta laboral sobra y la gente tiene dinero (con valor) en mano y la calidad de vida (salud, educacion y transporte) esta al nivel de Europa, ese cambio que se ve tardo 15 anos con varios gobiernos en ese periodo, acaso en Venezuela necesitamos reeleccion indefinida para tener otro Fidel Castro en Venezuela?

Y regreso a donde comence, luego de reflexionar un poco y pensar en lo que esta sucediendo les vuelvo a hacer las mismas preguntas:

Lo que esta pasando en el pais es normal?

La economia va por buen camino?

Cosas basicas como la educacion y la seguridad han mejorado?

No soy economista ni consultor politico, pero soy Venezolano y conozco la realidad de mi pais, quiza no toda y con detalles, pero no se necesita mas que abrir los ojos para ver lo que en realidad pasa.

Bueno senores saludos a todos y les deseo lo mejor...

--
Luis Barragan

Road trip through Estonia in one day!

2007-09-30T21:11:00.000+03:00

This weekend after a nice dinner at Laura(Colombia) and Immu’s (Estonia) place we took our stuff and went on a road trip to the north east side of the country. The rest of the gang was Yianna (Cyprus), Manu (Colombia), Kadri (Estonia) and Dasha (Russia).

Something that I still found interesting about Europe is the small size of most of their countries, travelling from Tartu (South) to Toila (North east) takes a little more than one hour, that means that you can have really nice weekends travelling to different places near from your home, besides there are many lakes, rivers, historic places and parks to visit.

Our first stop was on Lake Peipsi, It’s the third biggest lake in Europe and it’s shared between Russia and Estonia but most of it is in Estonia’s side. The lake, as everything in Europe :P, is sooooooooooo flat that if you want to swim you must walk inside about 200 meters and probably the water will reach your knees only, but the view is amazing you will think that you are watching the sea instead of a lake.

There is small part of the lake in which the two countries are about 500 from each other and literally you can swim to Russia from there.

After this we went to a famous fish marketplace and bought two Latikas (Smoked fish) and later we bought the rest of the Lunch (Salads, bread, ketchup, sausages, juice, etc) at a store in the middle of nowhere.

Our second stop was Toila and the biggest attraction was the cold Baltic Sea. There is a nice cascade on a cliff near the sea and a view point with some scary stairs, the place remind me the Angel’s fall but of course ten times smaller, still was a great place to take pictures.

We went a few kilometers further to a nice beach and had the first part of the lunch with our hands, we brought forks but that fish had so many bones that it was easier not to use the forks. Of course we stunk all the way back.

The Baltic Sea is also flat and cold, in summer it is possible to swim there but this time I just washed my hands there. On summer the color of the sea is kind of brown but right now it’s dark blue.

Our final stop was in Kaiu Järve (Lake Kaiu) and there Manu a Kadri were waiting for us almost two hours :s, we had a nice fire right next to a lake and had the rest of the lunch-dinner.

Tartu... my new town!

2007-09-23T12:57:00.000+03:00

"The kissing students"

So I am finally in Tartu, Estonia, for those of you who don't know where or what is Estonia here is a link with some info about the place. Actually the first time I heard about the place I had to google it because I didn't know anything about it :P

The two wildes, Oscar and Eduard

Anyway, I am here and it is not that weird as it sounds, is a town with 100.000 people a big amount of the are of students from many places in Estonia and the world, in just one week I've met people from Russia, Bulgaria, Armenia, Germany, Colombia, Brazil , Cyprus, USA, Finland and Belgium. Right now I am living in a student dorm named Raatuse 22 and I have to say that It has been kind of weird to live in this place, in Venezuela we don't have dorms so this is also a new experience and I am trying to enjoy every moment.

Tartu University

If you start to talk with people from here and you end up talking about Venezuela, as in Poland my country is know by four topics Oil, Miss Venezuela, Soap Opera and unfortunately by our stupid president Chavez, and by the way now I know that two continents thinks that he is a jackass (Europe and America). Here I found out the only good thing about soap operas, It has made Spanish very popular, so It's very common to find language institutes teaching it. Concerning the oil, wow how cheap is the oil in Venezuela! with the amount of money you spent here I can completely fill the tank of my car the whole year in Venezuela.

The Nobel prize winner, Wilhelm Ostwald

Now back in the subject, Tartu is called the University City because of the amount of students here, mainly in the University of Tartu, so the city is filled with energy and a very international flavor. The weather here is supposed to be really cold in winter, like minus twenty five degrees so my Venezuelan summer clothes won't be useful here at least for five or six months :P They have a really weird tradition on winters, the Baltic sea gets frozen and then they open a whole in the ice and each person is supposed to run from a hot steamy sauna to the whole and then take a dive in the Baltic sea, and is not just once, they do it the whole night! Maybe I'll send you some pictures about this tradition in a few months ;)

King Gustav II Adolf of Sweden

One main thing that attracted me to Estonia is their huge economic grown, and now that I am here I am doing some research about because I would like to understand todays Estonia compared with the small and poor country twenty years ago. So far all I know is that people now have money in their pockets and that money has good value, before 1992 it was weird to see a foreign car in the road (only LADAs were seen here) and right now you can see a lot of Mercedes, Audis, Mazdas, Volvos and many good brands, besides the increasing amount of malls and solariums everywhere .

Emajõgi River

This is my first weekend in Tartu and I started it on Friday with a nice birthday party for Manu's girlfriend, nice opportunity to meet a lot of new people here in the dorm. On Saturday I decided to take a walk across the town using a route that i found on this website and after three hours of walking and taking pictures I was done, now I realize that Tartu is really nice place, the city center is a big park, every place you look is green. This place has almost one thousand years so it has a lot of history and since Estonia is called the signing nation, there are also many cultural events in the town.

My apartment ;)

Japanese party!

2007-09-19T20:27:00.000+03:00

OK so yesterday was my last complete day in Poland and at night we had a real real real Japanese party at our place!

With a big help from our four Japanese friends Asia prepared a good party with some origami decorations and hello kitty stickers, of course this girls brought a lot of stuff from their country and this was also their last night here in Poland before going back to Tokyo, so It was the perfect day to eat everything they had.

Of course you don’t have an AIESEC party if you don’t have people from all over the world, and this one wasn’t the exception with some guests from Tunisia, USA, Japan, Rumania and of course from Venezuela and Poland :P

I like that so much! You can feel the diversity and how small and big is the world in this kinds of parties, you can hear some conversations related to traditions, food, music from each country and many subjects including of course the World War II, Hiroshima some AIESEC stuff and more.

Now back to the party, we had a lot of food! First they gave us a special soup with a nice flavor, with some fish on the bottom and some sea weeds.

Then came the main dish of the night, Sushi! These girls made almost thirty rolls with crab, tuna and another fish that right now I can’t remember.

They also had some help from our polish friend, actually she also speaks Japanese so she took advantage from the situation to practice one of her many languages (she also knows Spanish, English and of course Polish). The only problem with her preparing the sushi is that she putted some (a lot) wasabi in a couple (10 +/-) of rolls and now you can see my face while trying one of those :P

The soup was helpful after trying the wasabi roll :S

After the main dish we had a workshop about “How to prepare Sushi”, the girls gave us the ingredients cucumbers, carrots, eggs, crab, tuna, unidentified fish, sea weed and of course special rice. It is so easy to prepare them! If you have the ingredients you can have fun having a sushi Sunday or the day you prefer to cook weird dishes, the main problem is the rice because you have to put some vinegar on it and I missed the rest of the explanation so you will have to google it ;)

Besides sushi the girls also brought some liquid candy :P

Preparing the sushi involves four main steps: Prepare the rice and cut the ingredients (preferable in stick shape), Put some rice in the sea weed, Put all over the rice all the ingredients you like! And the last one, close the roll carefully and cut it.

So that's it guys, have some fun while having a sushi night!

Private Luis... Venzuelan Style ;)

2007-09-05T15:00:00.000+03:00

Let's start with this, if you are in Europe hair cuts are expensive! Or in Venezuela they are cheap, that depends on your point of view.

So again lets compare this with some facts, in Venezuela you are going to pay for a hair cut in a really cheap place Bs5.000 ( PLN 6,5) and Bs 20.000 (PLN 26,2) in a expensive place.

This time I went to Arkadia to get a hair cut, of course that is a big mall and they are going to charge me a lot there, but I just wanted to do some research, so the prices here in Poland are PLN 25 (19.088,00Bs) for a cheap hair cut and PLN 50 (38.164,00Bs) for an expensive one! After spending a lot of money eating the Panga I was pretty sure that I was not going to pay that much for a hair cut.

If you know me you can see that even a blind person can do my haircut because it really easy, so I decided to buy my own hair cutting machine and do it myself! Or better yet I told Mary and some friends (Peter and Asia) to help me out with this.

It doesn't look that hard when you see a professional doing it, this time I trusted my head to Mary and although she was a rookie I still have my head complete and besides a good haircut ;)

Of course now I look like private Luis, but actually I like it that way...

Fuck the Panga!!

2007-09-04T18:00:00.000+03:00

Yeah that's it, fuck the Panga! When you have a lunch already done in your fridge, eat it! In my case, today I went out to do some shoppings at the biggest mall in Warsaw called Arkadia.

So it was suppose to be a regular day shopping a pine to seed it in Warsaw, a hair cutting machine and a present for a friend, but of course if you spent the day in the mall you must have lunch there, the thing is that when you are living abroad and you don't know the language except for basic words like good morning, thanks, door, see you later, you are going to have some trouble buying food in places different that Burger King or Pizza Hut. This time I went to Wiking.

So if you don't know the language and you are in hurry because you are really hungry please read everything very well before asking for something! In my case I just saw a healthy fish and without reading very well the menu I just saw 10zl for the freaking fish and that sounded reasonable, so after adding some salad, rice and a drink I got a really expensive lunch today for 42PLN!!! So If you are in Venezuela and you don't have any idea, let me tell you that my lunch in Burger king would have cost 15 PLN :S

My advice is, read everything at least twice! And it doesn't matter if you are hungry ok, otherwise you will get something like this, but at least I can say that the Panga was really good actually I almost ate dish :P

3rd International Chopin Festival

2007-09-01T23:46:00.000+03:00

Ok so I'm a really lucky guy! I went to buy two tickets for Thursday night function of the 3rd International Chopin Festival, of course the tickets were sold out for the whole event, and right there buying the tickets comes one girl right from heaven to give back two tickets, she heard me talking to the guy from the philharmonic and then speaking in Spanish she told me that i can buy those two tickets, of course I bought them right there!

Then at the function i could notice that this time the event was not very popular for young people, there were a lot of old persons there and I think Mary and I were the only young couple in the event, that was kind of funny because all the persons there were looking at us kind of amazed :P

The philharmonic is a wonderful place, you can feel the history there and while you are sitting in that place you can imagine all the event that have taken place there.

The first part of the event, we had Stanislav Bunin at the piano playing Chopin's Piano Concerto in e minor and at the second part Tchaikovsky's Symphony no. 6 in b minor, both absolutely amazing.

It's really nice to remember the events in the Teatro Teresa Carreño and I'm grateful that I had the chance to go there and watch Gustavo Dudamel, one of the best orchestra conductors in the world, a couple of times last year. Now that I'm on this side of the world my gold is to watch one of his presentations, this time is going to be harder because most of his shows are already sold out three months before. But lets see what happens, anything is possible in this life ;)

Visit to the Łazienki Royal Park and the Warsaw Library

2007-08-31T12:13:00.000+03:00

So Mary's sister stayed in Warsaw last weekend and after going to the Old Town and the University of Warsaw we had the chance to visit the Warsaw University Library and the Łazienki Royal Park.

The library is huge! And outside you can see some writings from different authors in several languages. We didn't have the chance to go inside the library but went to park right next to this building. Mary called this park "Alice in Wonderland":

Well Warsaw has many parks, that's nice if you like to walk, jog or at least take a nap there. The only problem so far It's that is getting colder and I will have to get used to jog in this weather :S

After the trip to the library we went to the Royal Park, It's the biggest park in the city and this day the park was full of people, you can feel that It's summer because every person in this city is outside doing something, riding a bicycle, walking, shopping, visit the Old Town, malls, parks or having a beer in one of the millions of pubs here ;)

The only problem when you have three Venezuelan persons and nobody from Poland while you are walking across the city is that we don't know anything about the places!! Of course we could have made some research and maybe asked to somebody there, but we were also in a hurry because Mariana was leaving at 18.00 that day.

And to close this entry, here we have a video from a previous visit to this park, there was a national holiday and was the first time in Poland that they have a celebration and a parade because of the Army Day in more than forty years.

Visit to the Old town and the Warsaw University

2007-08-30T13:17:00.000+03:00

So this weekend Mary's sister came to visit Warsaw, and we took a long walk across the main places in the city. Of course Poland has been involved in wars and Warsaw has many historic places, but the most amazing thing is how they reconstructed everything! with such details that you can't even imagine that the buildings are not the original one.

If you read or you talk to anyone here about this place, they are going to tell you the same thing, 95% of Warsaw was destroyed during the war, and of course they are not lying:

After taking a walk around the old town and the Royal Palace, we went to the University of Warsaw and since Mariana and I studied in the UNEXPO Barquisimeto, of course this beautiful places brought some memories about our university.

Actually all these buildings were palaces and the university was found in 1816 according to Asia's info :P

If you see this picture, the translation says that Chopin live there.

It is not that big, but it's a really nice place to visit. I sent my first post card ever in this place, of course to my family in Venezuela, so maybe they will get it in December approximately :P

Polish is really hard!

2007-08-30T12:54:00.000+03:00

Warsaw is a really interesting city of course my biggest problem here is the language, Polish is really weird to understand but the city is well organized as you would expect of any European capital city and it is not a problem to move around if you have a map or even if you don't have it there are many sign everywhere and most of the young people speak English so you can ask for help in a kiosk or in any store and you will find your way, but if you want to take a glance to some weird polish things about the language look at the next poster.

Yes as you can now Mel Gibson's name is different. So that is just a little problem compared to the pronunciation, every word here has an dr or dz, the thing is they don't use a lot of vowels so they have some sounds that we don't use in spanish. I think Peter can give a good example on a video we recored on Mary's birthday:

And we are proud of our tongue twister "Tres tristes tigres...", after hearing this it sound like a joke :P

This is the new URL

2007-08-30T12:51:00.000+03:00

If you are wondering why did I change the URL of my blog, well basically because I changed my default email address and now I am not using theanswer19@gmai.com anymore, It is easier for me to use just lfbarragan@gmail.com, so the old URL was related to that email and there is no way to change that.