Newlywed thoughts...

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...

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

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

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...

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...

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

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...

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…

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...

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...

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...

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...

Snow...

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

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

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!!!

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

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!

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...

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