He liked it here…

    This post is about Freddie Mercury. He’s always been an inspiration to so many of us, always there when we needed his music. And he loved this island. Though he had water phobia. When he was here he would stay at Pike’s hotel and occasionally wonder around the island on a yacht. He was tense at first but slowly relaxed and became at ease with being on the water. Pike also remembers that he never acted like a star and never complained about anything even though his chef was not the best in the world. Freddie used to say: “everything is perfect darling”. A visit to Pike’s Hotel website gives you an idea about the sights and atmosphere there. He also sang Barcelona here in ‘87 with Montserrat Caballe at the famous Ku Klub. In time the Ku Klub “evolved” and it’s name was changed to Privilege. It’s still a prestigious club and you can find it here.

In Montreux Switzerland there’s the now famous statue of Freddie and on the plaque it reads: “Freddie Mercury: Lover of life, singer of songs” and indeed he was. It mus be quite a task to have to come up with a one-line description of one of the greatest front mans in rock history but as these things go this is a rather good one. If you ask me he was a lover of much more than this: good champagne, exquisite arts and good company.

You are welcome to add your feelings bellow or just listen to a song

Week one

Hey everybody again! I found another few reasons to like it here: an order from amazon arrived in 5 days Back home this takes approximately 6 weeks. The weekend was really interesting: on Friday evening we went to this nice bar I was telling you about, quite reasonable prices: 4.5 Eur for a Mojito (you would have to pay 5 Eur if you were in Amsterdam for instance) and quite good food. Here most of the bars also serve food in order to keep their drinkers well…. able to drink . On Saturday we went to Eivissa mostly shopping and that’s a very tiering business. You have two kinds of stores: really cheap ones full of “Made in China”s like the 1 Euro stores back home and really expensive ones. That has taken up most of the day. On Sunday we went hiking somewhere on the island. The geography of Ibiza is quite generous: you have white sand beaches and blue water but also mountain like hills rocky and steep. And that is a good thing because it means there are also climbers. And there are. We found some climbing walls that were riddled with pitons.

On the other hand the shopping experience can be quite discouraging: don’t try to find your favorite espresso coffee (Illy in my case), because you might get frustrated. In fact don’t try to find any coffee that you ever heard of. The only things you find here is the Nescafe and an local brand called Ibiza coffee that I have not yet tried. It might be a revelation or the contrary…. My best guess is that somebody back at the Bourbon House cursed me not to find my favorite coffee wherever I go. That’s mostly because their coffee sales took a major blow because of my leaving.

That’s mostly it for now.

Cheers!

Food for thought

I used to get up in the morning two hours before I had to leave for work. Myself I found this wired but in time I realized that I did that because in the morning everybody else was asleep and I had the house (kitchen namely) all to myself. I liked the peace and quiet. It was like recharging my batteries before starting a new day of work. This one time, I was in the kitchen early in the morning and I was washing dishes. I loved washing dishes but I had no real idea why I liked it. My mother woke up a bit earlier than she used to and came straight to the sink and began washing dishes in my stead telling me to go to work and that she’ll wash the dishes. Before I knew it, I was on my bicycle speeding on my way to work and I was terribly angry. After a couple of days I found some time to think about what had happened that morning and why I was so upset. It slowly downed on me that while my hands were mechanically washing the dishes my mind was at ease, wondering and free. I was thinking of things I needed to do that day and things I’ve done the day before, fun times with friends and plans for the weekend. I once heard a quotation that said: “Meditation is focusing the front part of the brain on a mundane task so the rest of the mind can be at peace”. I did not care much about it at the time but now I realize that it must be true. This also explained why I liked washing dishes in the morning when everybody was sleeping and I also think that the term “vital space” doesn’t only refer to a number of square feet surrounding somebody but also the peace and quiet that one needs at times.

Day 2 @ work

    I found another good thing about working from home: you can work late! Really late and not feel the urge to go home. Basically my working day is only limited by the time my girlfriend comes home. Today she came late. And I spent an extra 2 hours working. It’s fun if you love what you’re doing. But there’s also a downside: I don’t get to go outside much though and I’m really waiting for the weekend to break free. The temperatures outside are still nice, today it was cloudy but still a good 15~17 degrees centigrade. From what I hear the temperatures in the summer don’t go up all that much averaging between 30 and 35 due to the cool ocean breeze. I spotted a nice bar today, a select and club-like  place and added it to my weekend plans. I promise you all that I’ll take more pictures and explore more of the island but it turns out that I have to wait for the weekend to do that. Until then, at the audience’s request I present you with a few pictures taken from my window. Enjoy!

This is my neighbor’s nice tree in front of his house

Every programmer’s dream: a tennis / football field right outside “the office”. Too bad though that I’m the only one around here…

My other neighbor seems to have a thing for oranges. He has like 3 or 4 orange trees but he’s not “harvesting” the oranges and they fall on the ground…

A right answer

or, I always know the right thing to say after the right time to say it has passed. Anyway, here goes:

You know, a while ago I left a company to join another. And during a non-formal talk with one of the managers there he told me something that went like “we both know you’re not worth the money they offer you”. I could have felt offended and said something mean but I was surprised to find myself very calm. Things in life move on at great speed sometimes and you don’t always find the time to reflect on things that happened and really figure out why they went down in a certain way. But I found the time to really sit and think about this, about my non-angry reaction and about what he said. I realized that I did not get angry with him because he did not say that in a mean way. And though I did not know what to say at the time, an answer came to me in time. It was not that my set of skills were over paid by the new employer. It was just that the old one was not able to make enough profit by selling my skills to their clients to pay me that amount of money. And yes, from their perspective, I was not worth that sum. It was not profitable for them to pay me that much because they did not make all that much profit by employing me. This has taught me that you need to choose the companies you work for based on their potential rather than just the sum they offer to trick you into signing up with them. And yes, luck can play a major role in this. But once luck has played it’s part it’s important that you learn from that experience and use what you have learned in the future.

Hope this helps!

Did you get a new job?

Nope… I did not. I took the old one with me. That’s the question I get most often. I did not get a new job here but I was lucky enough to be able to continue to work for Levi 9 (www.levi9.com) just as if I was still in their office back in the good old snow covered Iasi. I can almost hear you say: “how cool!” and yes, there are good parts but there are also bad parts: for instance you never really get to shut down and go home. Because you are already home and you need your computer to be on anyway… That was sort of a rewarding feeling. Another bad part is that you get to spend most of your time inside the house and every little discomfort becomes a nuisance. The first day at work was kinda cool though!

Second question: prices. The prices for food are a bit higher than in Romania, you get to pay like 1 Euro for the cheapest bread, but the real problem is that you don’t always find what you would like. This means that you have to start eating other things, change your habits a bit and discover new things. That’s always good one might say but I’d rather do it at my own pace rather than suddenly. Eh well.. it’s a small matter. Just in case you were wondering, a supermarket here is more like a small nonstop, nowhere near Carfour or Kaufland. Instead they have specific shops for various things like home and garden or Chinese food.

Then there are the cars: almost every car, be it old or new, has bumps, scratches, broken headlamps or bumpers. It seems as they don’t ever repair any damage to a car be it big or small as long as it’s still running. And I realize that it’s legislation that keeps our cars in such a good shape. If you have a nice super car that you paid a lot for don’t for any reason bring it here. Parking is quite cramped and the neighbor’s bumper is just as good as anything else to stop. Even today there was this truck backing up, trying to park and it hit a stop sign on the sidewalk. Not the pole but the metal indicator at the top. The guy got out of the truck looked at the bent indicator, got back in the truck and continued to back up… I’ll leave the comments to you guys.

Enough for now, my time is up. You have more pics at http://ale.innertemple.net/ Enjoy and see ya all 2morrow!

Ibiza here we come

    Once upon a time, not so long ago, I was working for a software development company called Code 40 (www.code40.ro). In those days we were working on a product called Accept Email. This product we developed required a lot of our personal time and there’s this little bit that I’d like to relate:

Good old (coding) dayz…… we, the Accept Email team (www.acceptemail.com), were at work late at night performing a complex deployment on a cluster of machines and we were really really tried, it must have been 2 o’clock in the morning when it all finally clicked into place. At that very moment, one of the developers and a good friend of mine, Danny “the Squirker”, said: “Ibiza, here we come!” This expression entered the team lore and was used quite frequently thereafter. Time passed and, funny enough, I got here (Ibiza that is):

I’d like to salute all the former members of the team as well as anyone who has ever worked with me on AcceptEmail and I’d like all of them to get on a plane and get here. Free “hosting” is provided and the bars are all open!

Greetings to all of ya and see Foto Innertemple Net for more pictures.