Spring Break

Ok, March was 200 hours just on company projects, April was pretty much about the same and upcoming installations during May and June will take some extra hours as well. With that desperate vision I booked flight to Malaga and the day before the flight it looked like: no wind forecast, no sure place to stay as the guy I was supposed to stay with had to move to Stockholm temporarily.

From Tarifa 2009

Friday
Got up at 1:45am, moved to Germany, hugged almost-wife and ola to Spain. Switched planes in Mallorca (that place is so German) arrived in Malaga, hired car, took A7 to Tarifa and enjoyed 3 hours of perfect wind. Met some Czech people and found very nice place to stay.

Saturday
Got to the beach just when it started to rain, met some Germany guys who takes old cars from Switzerland and move the to Morocco (one way) all the way to mountains Atlas and then fly there with hang-gliders and then come home with small back pack by plane. Enjoyed sort of up-hill rally and got back to the beach for some wind. Took out my 13m kite, but after 40minutes of riding the wind got much stronger, I was glad to land safely and refreshed with few beers in the city center later that night.

Sunday
Got late, moved to beach but no wind today. Few people (including me) were waiting if termic wind picks up, but it did not. Instead I got some interesting sun burns, ouch! Cooled down by few beers in PachaMama and met friendly British girls who lives in Morocco and wave surf there, wow!

Monday-Wednesday
Get up late, make sandwich, move to kite beach and enjoy it until late. Then come home, get shower, apply cooling cream for the sun burns, wash the kite stuff and explored the city as much as possible. Kiting was great, some waves came and even it took me while to learn how to get over them it was worth it. Managed to do some very first and small jumps with landing downwind, can't wait to get more :) I think I am hooked for life.

Thursday
Up 5:03, moved to Malaga and 10:05 flight to Dusseldorf and at 17:15 I kissed my pretty-soon-wife again .)

Refreshing, enjoyable those small little trips.
aloha

Kuwait, Al Kuwait

Ok, few days ago I moved to do some tasks in Kuwait. I flew with Fly Emirates and yey, what an Airline. On 1,35h flight I got served like a king. It was this huge Airbus (no, not the 380), and the food was delicious. Three courses, compare that to sandwich I get on 1.1h flight to Denmark with CSA (I still like CSA a lot though;) ).

First thing I really enjoyed was the TAXI ride from Airport to the hotel. Perhaps it was because I tried to look like I do not care (or better like 'I own the world' - which was btw another advise from my Danish colleagues ! They said, every Arab behaves like that :)) this guy has impressed me. Driving old Ford (but with at least 5.0L engine) we were in 140+Kmh (or was it Mph?) going on the motorway from one lane to another and honking everyone around. What a ride, say WOW!

Al Kuwait city centre from the Marina Mall.

During a day I was mainly working and because the sunset is about 6:30pm most of the pictures were shot at night when I wondered around the city. Hotel was great and I spent a lot of time in this place ;)

Hotel's pool on top floor (23rd).

Most of the week I was starving. Ramadan in Kuwait is a litlle bit more seriously taken (at least when it comes to people just visiting the place) then in UAE. If they catch you drinking or eating during a day (Iftar starts about at 6 pm) you pay fine of 1000 KWD (about 4000$) and you go to jail until end of Ramadan (about three weeks from now). I really tried my best to not to miss my vacation. So the first day I was very happy to see the hotel service to forgot to clean my room. There were some leftovers from the breakfast .)

In the evening I tried to explore the surrounding areas but at the first sight there is just nothing in Al Kuwait. Only a few people wondering around, lot of dust and heat. This is what the Mall looks like at 7PM. At 10PM it got quite crowded.


Yesterday I got little bit of tired of thinking of Al Kuwait as a bad place to live. I asked the people where the locals go, there has to be some markets right? So I went to Souk Mubarakia. And that changed my mind completely. Temperature got down to about 37 degrees at night so it was 'comfy' to walk around in my full cotton trousers.
The whole markets is consisted of hundreds of small streets connected together. Those streets are full of small shops of various kinds. Interestingly same types of shops are close to each other. From spice shops, dates shops, fish market, meat streets to all kind of groceries shops.

Gold district :0 I am not into gold, but this place is magnificent.

Dinning place, I've really enjoyed local fish with rice, Arabic bread, salads, mango juice and Čaj a lot. Eva would be proud of me for the way I cut this fish and got rid of the fishbones (she is the real master in this!). And all this just for 2KWD, I could barely walk after eating here, delicious!

On the streets one can see the REAL cars! In some way the time is ticking slower than other places. What I also found interesting were the people. Very friendly. And you go somewhere, you think there has to be something special because you see crowds of people there and when you get close, you realize they are just standing there. Talking and nothing more.

I even managed to get to the Liberation Tower and everybody told me it is possible to go up and see the city from the top. Well that turned out not to be so true. Anyway it is magnificent construction, tallest in Kuwait. I've enjoyed the markets a lot, bought a lot of junk (like night vision binoculars which of course do not work and zooming 1:1, but don't buy it if it was 3KWD).

Well, time to say good bye to Kuwait. My flight to back to Dubai is in about 4 hours, then transit to Amsterdam and then back to Prague, home sweet home. Full album is here.

On the trip again, this time Dubai, UAE

There was not enough of wind in Denmark so I took the opportunity to try Dubai.

(the picture is pretty bad, I know)

People said things like this is not a good time to come here (temperature, humidity and Ramadan). A lot of that is true. Yesterday on the beach, I got new kite F-one Revolt 13m and was desperate to try it. But the wind was only about 5-7 knots (about 3m/s) and it was not flying at all of course. The water was so hot, it almost felt like a shower temperature Eva is used to ;) I tried to stay in the shade of the kite, but was sweating too much. By coincidence there was a 'ultimate survival' show on national geography that evening that showed how to squeeze a seaweed to get some water, will try that next time.

Then you get into taxi, and you get cold immediately. I think Taxis here are like public fridges. The temperature in it is close to zero. Everything here is air conditioned, so while you are in the building, Dubai looks like a great place, until you go out of course. Like trying to catch a taxi for 30 minutes makes you learn how to swear in Arabic. My colleague says, it is ok, you just get a shower three times a day. I agree.

My Danish colleagues also said a lot of other things that you cannot wear shorts on public, one cannot see womens face and more of that stuff. It took me several days of sweating in the trousers to figure out this is not true at all (they were just joking, like always). Dubai is actually quite open minded in those terms. People are very friendly. Just respect some basic rules and you are ok. It is Ramadan, so do not eat or drink on public as that is a sign of disrespect to those who are fasting them selfs. But takeaway is doable (just use the curtains in the hotel room).

Food here is great, you can pick from Indian, Pakistan, Japanese (I recommend Wagamama restaurant ), Arabic and many other cuisines. Price are affordable. What is really cheap is the oil (of course) and the cars. Friend told me a new VW Touareg costs around 110 000,- Dhs (around 20 000 Euro). Unfortunatelly you can't bring them back to Europe. Shops are huge, the only one I was to is Mall of Emirates, but that is enough.

I can't take photos, it is too humid here these days. This is the best I got to.


The temperature is close to 40 in the shade, I am heading off to Kuwait in two days. There is 50+, will see.

While in Dubai I met another Czech guy living in there. His name is Honza, he is kiting a lot, likes bikes and he is a great company, follow his story here. His friend is Passi (Finish guy, I hope I got it right) and he gave mi a ride in his Chevy Corvette. That car has 505HP and can do 0-100Kms in 3.6s (I witnessed it ;) With them I visited a place called Barasti Bar. One of the top rated bars in the world, check it out if you are in Dubai.

Ok, off to Kuwait now.

bye Brussels, FOSDEM, I am back to work

Times flies, weekend in Brussels is over (actually it is Wednesday now already!) and I am back to work. I hardly managed to put some pictures from my Monday's tripping in the city on-line. By checking the google earth measurement feature I managed to walk over 15 kms with more than 14Kg heavy backpack, in the end of day I was looking for any excuse to sit down for a while. PSP is very handy in those moments.

Brussels is very interesting city, de-facto capital of the European Union, hosting many of its key institutions. It also has beautiful wide streets full of any kind of shops one can imagine. It starts to wake up at 10am and tends to live up until late hours in the morning. I had whole Monday to explore the city. This time I skipped Grand Place and Manneken Pis statue as I saw it last time I was there and instead walked the city from Palace of Justice to the St. Mary's Church and then down to central station and from there to Basilica of Sacred Heart, 6th biggest church in the world. I watched the Zeitgeist the evening before, so I find it kinda funny to see all those huge buildings built in the name of God which might actually be just a worshiping of astrology signs. By the way I can recommend Zeitgeist to anyone, very interesting movie, scoring 8.9/10 on imdb, so check it out.

After long time I also managed to get together with a very close friend, so thank you for everything.

FOSDEM'08 was great, as it was my first bigger conference I consider it a huge success. I've met a lot of interesting people, managed to visit a lot of interesting talks and learn new stuff as well. I hope to post some more articles about FOSDEM if time permits. Looking forward to next year. Btw, the GNOME party on Saturday and GNOME people just rocks!

Ireland ..reloaded

Well I do not know why but it seems I have developed some kind of an addiction to Ireland, very interesting island. Rough country but kind people and a lot of friends. So while the "review money" were hot I bought a cheap flight to see them all. Leaving all "the stress" (no not really as I didn't have stress for a while) behind and went last Thursday right from the work to the airport. Two planes of Aer Lingus and ČSA were heading to Dublin, one flew on time, I was in the other one. Well Laďa and Michal were kind enough and both waited for me patiently, chewing their time in one of Dublin's casinos ;)

We got to Carlow and I tried to do my best and stayed up to 4 am. Time schedule was pretty tough and this was just really the start of it. My friends in Carlow are all croupiers, pretty good one. So there they were Poli, Gabča,Meggie, Michal and Laďa ... time to drink. I got up at nine and others around 4pm. The very same thing happened on Friday's night, tried to stay up as much as I could and managed to get to bed around 5. During the day I spent most of the time fixing Michals computer and talking that nice and crazy stuff about Global warming and so on and yes in the free afternoon I sent couple of CV's just to see my chances. And I even got one call and scheduled meeting on Monday, what a productive day.

On Saturday we had a trip to Dublin to buy Poli new computer, unfortunately one do not see any kind of DatArt or Electro World in Dublin's major shopping center DunDrum's. Well we still managed to get HP Pavilion with Core 2 Duo and Nvidia Go7400 chipset. Vista included. I have to say right now, VISTA IS SLOW and SLOW. We spent like at least 40 minutes in the shop before the "first time" process was over and I do not want to go through it again. But is has Aero, the real reason why Poli bought it. Later the night I felt really tired and yawned all the time. But Poli and about 6-to-8 vodkas (sometimes double) helped me to stay up through the night again.

Sunday I was bit clever and got up about 1 pm, my friends are even smarter and got up about 5pm. Except for Gabca, lovely girl, she got up quite early, she rules the house. House is still clean and everything is in its place. Without her I probable would ended up in a place where people and bugs (all kind of them) tries to live in a synergy, just like the old times from the college. During this day I started to feel a bit dizzy, likely all the sleep lag I acquired during last few days. All I ate the day was veggie soup, but good one. Finished setup of Vista (it does not come with DivX codecs preinstalled and is still far from ideal user experience, mixing things from Apple and previous versions of Windows, sometimes it is better, sometimes not) and now I really feel confident telling people to try Ubuntu as it provides user with nice, coherent and intuitive interface to work with.

Monday was quick, I got up, said goodbye and got on bus to Dublin. Bruno was there, managed me a place to put my bags. Met friend of him Katerina, which is great companion and was about to see what is on the market. But the day was cursed and about 1 pm I realized my CV contact is partially wrong. What the heck. After four there was another beer with other Czechs in Blue Goose. As far as I remember Bruno,Babu,Petr,Katerina,Tomas(perhaps twice) were all there and then another couple of drinks at Bruno's house. Battery depleted...completely.. for sure

Don't know how, but got up at 4:50, and then it was quick ride to home... 12:00 lunch with Eva.

Love you, glad to be home....

Wexford, Ireland

Vacation is over now, what a crazy week. Friends, parties, alcohol, fast foods, Fiifa06, Playstation, more playstation and no hacking at all. I have to say, all people I met in Wexford were great. And girls, always smiling, even when they took the last penny off me while playing BlackJack in Casino. Well I got back next day, with more luck then and earned my money back!
Another must is Michal, after I've consumed the best hamburger in the world, Poli leaned to me and asked: "How did ya like SOYA meat!" Fantastic.
While doing nothing, I had time to explore YouTube.com, go straight to Top Favorites, All Time and and look for Chad Vader, hilarious. Will Ferrel on Google video as George Bush is funny as well.

Well, glad to be home again, in one piece, ready to do some coding again.

Some pictures from Ireland:

Wexford, Ireland

Off to Dublin, again

The speed of this year is amazing, to my surprise it is already end of it and I still had 10 days of vacation left. Well not anymore, took the oportunity and I'm off to Dublin again. Last time it was exactly a year ago, I was visiting Eva, this time it's a friend of mine Poli.
I guess to sprinkle things a bit I got sick just a day before the leave, not so funny. Then I spent 400Kc for 3 teas and mineral water, still in Prague, unbelievable. Dublin is beatiful, maybe because of this we took several roundabouts twice and couple of extra miles more before we got right on N-8 to Wexford.
Time to relax, watch some movies and who knows, Google is here!