If you know me well enough, you know that I can at times hyperfocus on something and forget everything else around me. That can be a handy skill when studying, playing music, creating something, or getting things done at work.
Unfortunately, it's not such a useful quality when you're rushing to get out of the bus to get to work and you end up forgetting your camera in the bus and then chase it down Terminator-2 style until the next stop a few blocks down the road... I wouldn't recommend it, but it's a good warmup and it really gets the adrenaline going...
When I caught up with the bus, a fine Spanish gentleman came down from the bus smiling. He must have seen me running after the bus, realized what had happened and saw the camera and handed it to me.
He or someone else in the bus could have easily just taken it and I would have never known who did it.
I like it when my faith in humanity is restored or reinforced.
Thank you good, honest people of the world.
Monday, June 30, 2008
thank you
Thursday, June 26, 2008
just a thought (David McCullough)
I can fairly be called an amateur because I do what I do, in the original sense of the word--for love, because I love it. On the other hand, I think that those of us who make our living writing history can also be called true professionals.
Read More...time is relative
I was taking a break from work and sorting blogs I used to frequent to see if anything relevant's been going on and re-found the golden nugget that is stuff white people like.
Being in Spain has warped my sense of time a bit. This is a country where time is often a very subjective matter given that siesta time is from 2-ish to 5-ish depending on the store, and most stores open at 9am-ish and bars and other places close at 4am-ish or whenever people get tired and want to go home (6am-ish). Needless to say, when I go back to the states I'll take some time to adapt to going out at 10pm instead of midnight, and bars and clubs closing at 2am as opposed to 4am or 6am...
Anyhow, bigger chain stores and franchises stick to scheduled and posted times much like their counterparts in the States, but smaller shops are a very different ball game. What's surprised me a bit is that it sometimes extends to business. For example, I've been to a few meetings and seminars and other functions where people arrive on time, but things get started 5 to 10-ish minutes after the hour and people use that time to chat and mingle until things get started. In a sense, it reminds me of MIT, where we start classes 5 mins after the hour and end them 5 mins before the hour. The one exception I've found to the 10 minute-ish rule are meetings with executives from other companies... perhaps it's the fact that things are more formal when several executives are involved as opposed to meetings within the company.
With this difference in time perception and cultures in mind, I found a particular entry that made me laugh. A lot.
White people love: Being Excessively Early For Events, Classes, Meetings, Work, Parties, Etc
White people will frequently show up to various events 15- 35 minutes early for no reason at all. A favorite quote used to explain this phenomenon is “Early is on time, on time is late, and late is unacceptable”. What this means and why they live by this quote no one really knows, but it is a mantra that white people frequently recite to themselves every morning, as means or ensuring their timeliness to whatever function, they will be attending.
There is only one exception to this rule, which is when there is a limited supply of something that is deemed ultra-important by the white community, such as concert tickets, computers or other sale electronics, or reality television spots. White people may show up, 8- 24 hours early, instead of the normal 15-35 minutes, for these special cases, even if it means sleeping on the street in middle of winter (which is also referred to as camping) and foregoing “non-essential” things such as showering, brushing your teeth, and even eating...
Monday, June 23, 2008
Barça
This weekend at Barça was pretty sweet. I finally got a tan, got to see La Sagrada Familia - one of the most impressive and beautiful buidlings I have ever seen - and got to hang out with some awesome people. Unfortunately, I left the a710is (I have to come up with a name for it...) with most of the really good shots at Azadeh's place, so I'll have to wait 'til next weekend to get those but sometime this week I'll be posting pix from the sd800is.
After a 7hr+ ride, Tylor and I made it to Madrid safe and sound but the ride was a bit bumpy. We didn't get a whole lot of sleep and at some point I woke up to Tylor's head on my shoulder, I thought it was kinda weird but was too tired to care and went back to sleep, haha.
The bus station for the Barça/Madrid bus is in the same building as the bus to work, just in a different level, so we went straight to work. We made it to the office at 8am. I'm sure it's the earliest we've made it to the office and the current task is trying to stay awake and productive...
I've really become a bit of a coffee junkie since getting here and hazelnut coffee is the greatest thing ever... even if it comes out of a vending machine, haha. Or maybe it is so because it comes out of a vending machine.
Read More...
Friday, June 20, 2008
sweet setup
I'd be tempted get one of these sometime... but for now my SD800is and A710is will do, they make random snapshots more convenient :p
Anyway, off to Barcelona for the weekend!
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
respect
It's no secret that I have what some may call a man-crush on Kanye West. His beats are good, his lyrics are some of the best, he's got an ego, and the fact that he's from the Chi helps too.
As a football (soccer for y'all) goal keeper, though, Gigi Buffon personifies what I want to be when I grow up.
I felt nostalgic when we played Saturday at el Retiro with some new people. It reminded me of street soccer with my cousins in the rain, soccer games during recreo, high school tryouts, penalty shootouts... I was dead tired after the game, but it reminded me of how fun it is and how much work it takes to play well. I have to emphasize playing well because what's the point of simply playing? Anyone anyone can play, but anything worth doing is worth doing right. Fortunately, I should get plenty of chances to play right around here. I watched the Italy-France match at an Italian bar and it was awesome to be surrounded by people so passionate about football again.
Sometimes, since coming to Spain a strange feeling overcomes me. Even though I'm halfway across the globe from home, I feel like it's a homecoming of sorts.
Sometimes.
[Lupe Fiasco - Hustlaz Song]
Friday, June 13, 2008
argentine haiku... or something
"you have to stop smoking.
drinking is the answer.
to all your questions."
~Leandro
argentine thoughts
One of my roomates is an Argentinian chef. He's surprisingly good at it, but English is not his forte, so he comes up with the funniest lines.
I speak spanish with him, but even then he's hilarious so I think it's more his hilarity transfering over to English...
"I'm so happy for the happiness I'm feeling"
best work email. ever. (so far)
De: RRHH [XXX@tid.es]
Enviado el: viernes, 13 de junio de 2008 12:20
Para: XXX@tid.es
Asunto: [General] JORNADA INTENSIVA
Os recordamos que el próximo 15 de junio comienza la jornada laboral de verano con los siguientes horarios:
* De lunes a viernes:
Entrada de 7:30 a 9:00 horas
Salida de 14:30 a 16:00 horas
--
We remind you that the coming June 15 marks the beginning of the summer work schedule:
*From Monday to Friday:
Enter at 7:30am to 9:00am
Leave at 2:30pm to 4:00pm
--
The schedule includes an hour for lunch.
Random (and common) coffee breaks are not included...
[The printer hum along to the sound of a thousand excel printouts]
ni modo
So after my big rant yesterday about music, today I don't have to worry about it distracting me.I forgot my headphones...
Maybe it's better this way, bye bye Beethoven.
[Listening to: Black Eyed Peas - Like that (in my head :p )]
Read More...
Thursday, June 12, 2008
perdido en translation
Coming to Spain I expected to speak Castellano (Spanish) most of the time. Since I've been hanging out with Tylor and met a lot of fellow Americans, I've ended up speaking far more English than I thought I would. On top of that, and to my surprise, most of my co-workers speak pretty decent English (for not having lived in an English speaking country) and some, like my tutor, speak it rather well. Granted, I'm working on the business side of things and English is the de-facto standard and Telefónica is a rather big multi-national enterprise so it shouldn't come as a total surprise, but the quality and quantity surprised me nonetheless.
Anyhow, since I've been reading up on papers and reports to get familiar with what's going on in the bigger picture, I've been doing all of my reading in English. I don't mind it at all and it makes sense because the papers are written in English. I like listening to music while I work, so thankfully I brought along most of my tunes in my external drive and load what I like best to my laptop at work.
This multilingual environment has become a bit more complex than I first imagined: I was reading English, listening to people's conversations in Spanish around me, listening to my music which switches randomly between English and Spanish (featuring a small selection of French, German, Italian, and Japanese), while trying to write down notes and emails in English and Spanish...
Just dealing with one language is tough enough and at times like these I understand and appreciate why multi-core is an awesome concept for computing... but then you have to worry about making sure everything else keeps up with the cpus - the bus, ram, hdd... haha, I can be such a geek.
Anyway, since Mozart's my homie, today I decided to eliminate a layer of complexity and listen to music without words. After all, my job is to optimize methods, reduce waste, and increase efficiency, haha.
I'll have to load Beethoven, Rach & Tchaikowsky for tomorrow, but at least I have Prokofiev, Chopin, and Daft Punk to accompany Mozart for today.
For now, some T-Pain will do, though.
[Currently playing: T-Pain - Bartender ft. A-kon]
Read More...
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
rest [or lack thereof]
Yesterday and today I've been feeling a bit more tired than usual. Yesterday I attributed it to the lecture on approximation methods, today... I have nothing to attribute it to - at least nothing as obvious.
Since I've arrived so much has changed that it'd be difficult to attribute it to a single thing anyway.
I was running on "MIT time" so I had a hard time going to sleep before 2-3am when I was home (Chicago), then I came over and switched time zones (+7 hrs) and didn't sleep for a day and then slept for 7 hrs and then didn't sleep for 2 days (save a nap) and then there was the weekend... maybe it's the lack of sleep catching up to me, but that's not anything I wasn't used to in school.
Now that I think about it, though, I think the biggest difference may be the food. Except for the paella we made the other night, I haven't really had a good filling meal - oh yeah, lunch at tid is pretty sweet and only 2 euros, which is dirt cheap for the quality of the food we get. Anyway, aside from the one really good meal a day, I haven't really been eating much. I also ran out of power bars (which I brought with me from the states :p ) so now I don't have my random snacks anymore. I gotta go to a supermarket and buy fruit and other random snacks and find something other than sandwiches to make on a regular basis 'cause going out all the time's gonna get unnecessarily expensive fast.
I also miss working out. I miss the gym!! I haven't been in one in... 3 weeks? Man, I feel like I'm wasting away. I mean, I've been doing pushups and all that good stuff without weights, but now I feel like I'm going through some sort of workout withdrawal. Gotta add a gym search to my to do list.
Hmm, I just rambled on a lot, but at least it means I'm not sleeping, hehe. alright, I feel a little bit more alert now, hmm, I think now I understand why people here (and in all offices, really) go on coffee breaks so often. I guess I should've had coffee instead of juice.
Monday, June 09, 2008
Back to school...
I signed up for a data mining seminar at work and to my surprise, it's actually just an implementation of 6.041 (prob + stats) so naturally I became sleepy after the first half hr of the chat, haha, j/k :p
But in all seriousness I think this is stuff I've done in a pset last term... the theory is a bit dry but rather simple, but what I like is the fact that it's being implemented , particularly the implementation for image denoising, which I find rather cool given that I'm a bit of an image junkie... LOL this guy keeps talking about matchmaking and how we haven 't made any advances on it in the last 50 years and how we could use algorithms such as his to improve on it, haha... I wonder why he's so interested on the topic :p
Friday, June 06, 2008
true friends
just came back from watching the celtics pound the lakers. it was awesome even if most ppl at the bar were rooting for la and gasol.
while there, i think i might've presenced the most touching act of friendship i can remember.
girl 1 - *points at girl 2* we gotta get her laid.
girl 3 - why?
girl 1 - she was w/ this guy for 6 years and just got out of it
girl 3 - oh, ok
would your friends go that extra mile for you? :p anyhow, what's a gentleman to do but help a damsel in distress? haha
i also just realized i might be in a room w/ nine fair ladies... spain just keeps getting better
i still need to find an appartment, though
[pix later, posting from pda]
