Snow in the Netherlands

The Netherlands is well know as ice-skating country, cold winter days have often a clear sky. Nevertheless, the last two years have been an exception, specially this year. We are having cold days, for sure, but not clear sky. This year the Netherlands is the land of snow. It is not Cleveland or Halifax, but for the flat country this is new and is quite cahotic.

My daily trip to Delft from The Hague by bicycle has become a beautiful and a bit dangerous adventur (I have already felt four times, because of the tram tracks invisible under the snow). I let you with a few pictures. Happy Christmas!

Wonderful Nepal

The first impression of Nepal was completely conditioned by our two weeks in India; it was a big release. Less people, cleaner and the possibility to walk in the street without being in guard all the time.

Later we realized that Nepal is a poor country, poorest than India in terms of infrastructure and industry, but you don’t see misery and people look happier. Moreover, when you start to go up the mountains you are impressed by the natural wonders of this country. At the moment you see the big Himalayan mountains you have already felt in love and the day you visit Chitwan National Park you are sure you need to come back.

Kathmandu is the exception, is noisy and chaotic. Nevertheless, it is far away from Indian standards and it has islands of peace. Nepal is mainly Hindu but Kathmandu is full of Buddhist temples.

Rebecca finished the selection of pictures and they are available on her website, India and Nepal. And we posted our first entry in our shared blog “if I see it again”. I hope you enjoy it.

Incredible India

Country of variety and extremes; country of complexity. Today is our last day in India before to enter in Nepal and I am sure I will need a long, long time to process all what we have seen in these two weeks. The mixture of beautifulness and extreme unfairness of Indian society have caused on me a strong contradictory feeling.

For this short entry a funny picture in a incredible beautiful site of India, more impressions to come will be posted in our new shared blog If I see it again that we will activate after holidays (in November). For the pictures it will take some time, now they are professional, so they need to be selected with calm and they will be posted in Rebecca's photo website.

Let's see what wait for us in Nepal!

Back on track

Eight month without updates, eight months waiting for the next step in my career. I went to Netherlands looking for an international work experience, but after a short while I already knew I would like to work in the university. Therefore, I needed a PhD.

I tried to get involved in one from the department I was working for, but it didn't work. So I decided to look for a change. At the beginning it looked easy. Unfortunately, the economic crisis hit the university and getting a PhD position became quite complicated.

Nevertheless, after eight month, three of them being unemployed, I succeeded getting one. I will work again in TU Delft, but now in a research institute for the built environment called OTB. I will be working in a European project about energy efficiency in housing renovation.

I'm really happy! I will be soon travelling around and learning again about different cultures. And to illustrate the news a picture from the kick-off meeting of the project.

Yes, it was in Paris!!!

Kuala Lumpur

My last two days in Malaysia I have stopped in Kuala Lumpur to take a look over the Petronas Towers. Ok, not only to see the towers... but I must say that they are really impressive. Kuala Lumpur is a really modern city, with numerous high buildings, huge commercial centers and quite a lot of tourists.

Once you walk outside the hotels zone and you leave the western life style you realize that the different ethnics groups are not mixed. I walked a little bit around the Malay, the Indian and the Chinese zones.

Only two days and 35ºC have not allowed me to have an appropriated look at the city. Nevertheless KL has confirmed me what I saw in Penang; Malaysia is a country with really friendly people, incredible food, nice landscape and an interesting and complicated coexistence between the ethnic/religious groups.

I really recommend to visit it. Clicking the picture access to the full album.

Penang

Penang Island, known as “the Pearl of Orient” is a historically trade port from Malaysia. Malaysia is a Muslim country but with a big percentage of people from other religions and races. Chinese mainly Buddhist, Indians mainly Hindus and a large list of other origins and religions.

This mixture has been sharing the same space for at least 200 hundred years. They have had serious problems of coexistence and some of these problems still present today, nevertheless is amazing how they manage to interact having so different styles of life.

I have spent one week in this place because of a conference and a symposium on sustainable development that was organized by the University Sains Malaysia. The conference was really interesting, South-east Asia countries are quite advanced in the topic and the symposium was a great learning experience because of the group of students with so different background.

Moreover George Town, the historic part of Penang, has been declared Unesco World heritage city because of the numerous traces of all the religions and ethnics groups that have coexisted in the city. The photo gallery is then full of temples.

I hope you will enjoy them, cliking access to the album.

Bandung

Indonesia with 225 million of inhabitants is the most populated country of South-East Asia and half of the population life in Java Island. This is a country with and Hindu background, that is present everywhere, but with 90 % of Muslim population (only Bali is mainly Hindu and some small islands are mainly Cristian).

Indonesia could maintain you entertained for several months but this time we had a really tight schedule to visit ITB (Institute Technology of Bandung) so I had no time to walk around. Nevertheless the experience has been incredible interesting for me, it is my first time in Asia!!!

In this three days in Java, we spent one in the car traveling between Jakarta and Bandung. Traffic jams, motorbikes with two or even three passengers, crazy taxi drivers; there is nonexistence of traffic rules. The other two we had meetings with different professors and deans and my boss gave a speech about engineering and sustainability. The main goal was to look for cooperation opportunities as we are involved in a project of creating a network of technical universities related to sustainability.

What has shocked me is that even they are Muslim, they are really moderate. Not all the women were veil and they are present in all levels of the society (the previous rector of ITB was a woman). The other surprising factor is the smile and the laugh, everybody offers you nice smiles and when they talk they always laugh of everything, they make you feel comfortable from the first moment.

For sure I need to come back and visit it properly.

I don't have too many pictures, clicking access to the full album.

La Palma

I have spent one week of holidays in la Palma, known as “la isla bonita” from Canary islands, it is a small precious volcanic island. Sixty kilometers long and 30 km wide with a top high of 2426m; walking there or you go up or you go down.

La Palma has no beach, well a few ones, as most part of the coast are high cliffs, but so much slope offer you incredible views from every single point, even more offer you all kind of changes in vegetation in a really small area.

A paradise for a nature lover and one of the worst moments to have a camera break down. Luckily this time I had an extra one, and even better, a real photographer!!

* Rebecca's pictures, except a couple of them. Clicking the full album.

October = Raid (organizing and running)

This month I have been in Catalonia two times because of the raids (eco-challenge).

First organizing with the Comapedrosa teammates the 3rd edition of the Raid Roig. We had a large number of friends who helped us for the logistics during the day of the race, and as it was the third edition it worked perfectly. Moreover we were really lucky with the weather and the race was a success. We had 21 teams of two people and even two teams came from the Netherlands (yes I convinced some friends that the trip was worth it).

The best is that you take a look into the large gallery of pictures, because we had a team of photographers, and a team of cookers, and dj’s, and designers, and…

Second running the final of the Catalan championship of Raids that took place in les Garrigues, this was a two day competition in teams of 3, so as it was the last of the season we arranged two teams (like this all member of the team could run it). In total it was around 100 km mountain biking and 40km running with an ascent gradient of 3000m and I don’t know how, but we survived.

I post one picture of the teammates at the video of the second day is available here (in catalan).

Raids are over for this season, next year we will try to run one in France (the country where this kind of competition was created). We got the subscription as a present from our friends because of the organization of the Raid Roig.

Stockholm

The first impression of Stockholms remembered Paris to me but this similarity dissipates in the moment you see the waterfront. Stockholm is situated over several islands so the waterfront is everywhere; the water is sometimes more busy that the streets (there are thousands of boats). The other difference is the silence, Stockholm is a big city, there is quite a lot of people in the streets but you don't feel to be in a crowded place. I'm pretty sure that two Spanish make more noise than a 100 Swedish.

As I only had one day to visit the city after the workshop (yes I came here to work) I walked and cycled around. I have only visited one museum: the Vasa. This museum is quite estrange one, it only has one attraction, but is quite big: a huge 17th century ship that sank in his first trip. On the 50's they found it and managed to refloat and restore it, a process that took several years.

My overall impression is that Stockholm is a really nice city to visit (and with incredible goodlooking inhabitants) but is not in my list of places I could leave in. The pictures link to the complete album.