Hey,
It’s been silent for a while but for those of you who still remember when my birthday is please give a thought to this beauty:
Audi’s all new R8 with 420 Break Horse Power and loads of goodies. This car is also featured in the Iron Man movie. See the trailer here.
Enjoy
and oh… don’t let the price-tag scare you, it’s only a minor inconvenience and I promise not to do this if you buy me that car 
Cheers!
Really. Forget all about using the blinkers and scratches and bumps on cars. They really can not drive properly. I think it’s something to do with peoples. Take Germans for instance. They’ve figured out how to make a suppercar a long time ago. And they just keep improving. Italians: well… they only make supercars. But the French…. just terrible. Never sorted out the difference between a rock and a stick (so to speak). But they have excellent cuisine. So it is my belief that peoples have things they’re good at and things they’re bad at. I don’t read the newspapers, coz I can’t understand the language, nor listen to any sort of news whatsoever. But even so I heard that yesterday some Spanish guy died in an accident. And that was right after driving the day before yesterday by a closed section of the highway that was full of police cars, fire trucks and the thickest smoke you’ve ever seen. I could not even begin to make out what had happened there. And in case you were wondering, yes, these are two separate events. And just the month before, also without reading any papers I found out that some 18 years old lost control of his vehicle, as I later learned a 223HP 2006 Ford Focus ST, and drove of the road to his death. I mean who in their right mind would turn over such a powerful car to a 18 years old that probably has just driven his first thousand kilometers… or first thousand and two? What difference does it make anyway. I still drive by those tire tracks and the big hole in the vegetation on the side of the road where he’s gone through. And these are just the ones I’ve heard of. Imagine if I was reading the newspapers. Their police force must be so fed up with them that they don’t even bother to make them report every incident and have them repair their cars afterwards like it’s the case back home. This must account for the omnipresent signs of abuse on mostly every vehicle. And I will not mention all the minor crashes I’ve driven by since I’m here and in fact I will not say much more than I already did and let you guys come up with some comments.
Enjoy.
The land of new experiences never ceases to amaze me… Car washing was another one. Yes, I’m a spoiled kid who is used to handing the car keys over and taking a cab to a nice club have a coffee and a relaxing chat then returning after 2 hours to pick up a shiny and like new car (K9). Here however it’s a whole other story. You go to these “automated” car washes where you insert some coins and voila: the turbojet comes to life. You press different buttons for foam, active foam, water etc and it’s mostly a do it yourself kind of thing… I assume it’s not particularly entertaining on a cold Monday morning when the least thing you feel like is getting wet. And it takes a bit of skill as well. My first time was not that bad I guess, given that it was a first time. The car looks so well when it’s wet. But when it dries up: disaster. This was the exterior. Because for interior cleaning you have a vacuum cleaner that works on coins as well and: do it yourself. I think I miss my hometown…
It was on a Friday of no particular consequence and I was very caught up in some piece of code I was working on when somebody knocked at my door. I looked at the calendar: The 18th of January… It can’t be… But it was!!! I had ordered Miss Silvia from Rancilio only four days ago and here it was. Those FedEx guys surely know their stuff.
That day I did something I have not done 2oo8 so far: I took a “lunch break” and went in search of coffee. As you might have already found out, not much to choose from around here so I had to settle for the only pack suited for espresso use: Marcilla Espresso. I quickly got back home and proceeded to unpack Silvia and get hear all warm and steaming ;;) I was amazed by how much more professional this espresso machine felt compared to what I had back home: a staggering 58mm brass portafilter with double spout really heavy and sturdy next to the 52mm plastic one that I had back home and a gorgeous stainless steel polished body compared to the all plastic housing I was accustomed to. Another feature of this portafilter is that after a normal 30~45min warm up time the tips of the spout are really hot to the point where it’s no longer comfortable to touch them. S000 hot! Next comes the boiler: (I know, boring stuff for you all) a 0.3 liter boiler by far larger than what I had up to now that produces a lot of steam to last 2 or 3 cappuccinos or more.
And here are some pictures so that you can see what I’m talking about:
And finally, one picture I’m particularly proud of: My first attempt at latte art
Happy coffee to all of you!
“Dr. Ernesto Illy – the second generation of the Illy family, and an absolute giant in the world of espresso and coffee research and science – has passed away.”
Read the whole story on CoffeeGeek.
Imported holidays. I love to hate them. A mate asked me the other day: “What do you do on Valentine’s day?” I do nothing special. What do you do on the Chinese New Year? Or on the Vernal equinox ? Coz’ the Japanese will be out celebrating. In my opinion the adoption of this holiday is just another way of manipulating the masses into spending money. If anyone really cared for this kind of celebration for sure they would have noticed our own equivalent to the Valentine’s day.
Just my two cents.
Part one: Have a plan
This is a trip to the mainland of Spain planned two weeks in advance that went “a little bit slightly turbo”. The whole idea was buying a car. Alexandra had a couple of Romanian friends and they found a suitable Audi A4 in Quintanar del Rey. To get there we had to leave Ibiza on Friday, go to Denia by ferry boat using the Ibiza-Formentera-Denia route, meet with Marius and Mihaela at the ferry in Denia go back to their place in Quintanar del Rey (260km see route here) sleep Friday night there, on Saturday take the car drive to Barcelona, find Atlassib to pick up the bicycle, take the wheels off, stuff it in the car, drive to the port, get on the ferry and go home. Some of you might not be familiar with the bicycle part but my bicycle was sent from Romania to Barcelona in Spain (because that’s the closest that Atlassib gets to Ibiza) and the problem is that they would only give it to me in person and no matter how I tried I could not convince them to give it up to DHL to deliver it on the island.
Part two: Stick to it (or How it all went wrong)
Along the way we encountered a couple of problems though. In Denia we had a hard time meeting up with Marius and Mihaela because Balearia has terminals on both sides of the port: we were at one terminal and they were at the other one. These two terminals were rather similar as well: “OK, I see the roundabout.” “Good. If you see the roundabout then we’re the ones parked on the right side.” “There’s a huge truck on the right side.” “There are no trucks here”. You get the idea. It went on like this for around 45 minutes before we finally met. Then Marius, who is a professional driver took us all back to Quintanar del Rey or… home. The guy was only doing 160km/h when he was writing an SMS while driving or looking for his cigarettes. The rest of the time the speedometer would read anywhere between 180 km/h and 200 resting with predilection around 200. A nice ride all in all. After this I was able to believe him when he said that he drove from Quintanar del Rey to Timisoara in just 24 hours (2647km see route here). We got to Quintanar del Rey where Mihaela has the best Tapas bar in town ate a bit and went to sleep.
The following day at around 1 o’clock we were leaving Quintanar del Rey heading for Barcelona in the car which is an Audi A4 the first model ever produced. It has a 1.9 diesel engine that produces 90 horse power. It was run for 124.000 kilometers or, as programmers put it, it has 124 K. Loads of extras like climatronic, onboard computer, abs etc. We got a bit lost along the way and got to Barcelona at 21 o’clock in the evening after driving 895km according to the onboard computer with a medium fuel consumption of 4.5 liters for 100km. In the mean time we bought a map. Half an hour is way too little time to find Atlassib and get on the ferry so we resumed to trying to find Atlassib and slept in a parking lot when we finally gave up at 10 o’clock in the evening. We were prepared to sleep in the car so we had sleeping bags and all. The bad thing though was that there was no ferry till Monday evening. So here we are “lost in Barcelona” with 48 hours to spend.
Day3: Sunday
On Sunday we got up at 7 and started to look for Atlassib. I drove for 3 hours in the hellish traffic you would normally expect in Barcelona’s center. We stopped and grabbed a byte and then it was her turn for another 5 hours. We eventually found Atlassib and I finally got my bicycle, took the wheels off and stuffed it in the trunk along with several other things. The next problem was that I had to work on Monday, I had my laptop and everything but a good internet connection was required and also in a decent place. A cafe or a McDonalds would not do. We were pondering on how to do that when Alexandra said: “Well… I have this friend in the south of France…” and it was “To France!” from then on. We drove another 200km (that was a doodle next to the 900 the day before), and found ourselves faced with another problem: we could not get a hold on Elias because he was off to Italy as we later found out. So we slept in the car for the second time some 25 kilometers from Perpignan.
On Monday morning, at 6:30 we got up and were determined to drive to Barcelona and find a nice internet cafe that was quiet enough for my Skype calls and had a wireless connection for my laptop. It was then that we found that Elias had returned and sent us an SMS sometime during the night. We drove back 25km to his place and finally met with him. It was all nice and sweet, I had a nice cozy place to work in, Alexandra was hovering around the house etc. Elias came back around lunch with some friends and his girlfriend also came with a friend. He cooked a good meal and we were 7 persons around a round table: one Italian (Elias’s girlfriend) one Lebanese (Elias himself), two Romanians, two French guys and another girl from Chile. Thank you Elias and Stef! 
After my working day was over we left for Barcelona where in 4 hours we had to board the ferry. After getting lost so many times in Barcelona we had no problems finding the port and boarding the ferry This “boat” would leave at 9:30 in the evening and would take 9 hours and a half to get to Ibiza literally crawling at 6 knots/hour.
We arrived early in the morning in San Antonio where we were met with a light rain and drove all the way to Santa Eulalia (or home), a staggering 28 kilometers. First thing when we got home I fired up Silvia and pulled two great shots of Illy espresso that I finally managed to find in France, again thanks to Elias and Stef!
After we had what some call “Beautiful coffee” it was work again with a small lunch break transformed in a Audi photo shooting session since a few of my friends badly wanted to see pictures.
I guess that that’s about it, it was loads of fun and quite interesting. I welcome questions and remarks and I’d like to thank again to everyone that has made this possible, in no particular order Marius and Mihaela, Elias and Stef, Alexandra and myself 
Cheers to all of you!
Friends have been asking me to post some news and relate some experiences so they could see better how’s life “outside the jar” as one of them puts it. So here I am, posting. Life here has a certain degree of routine, to be sure and so I found myself wondering what could I possibly write that would interest you guys. And I found the topic above: cars.
Back home buying a car is quite an effort and some know this better than others, but here you can get a car from around 1.200 euro. That would be a battered Ford Ka but hey.. it’s a car, right? Then you have for around 1900 euro a Peugeot 106 coupe, the new model, with around 65.000 km, moving up you can get the Mercedes C280 from ‘97 that has leather upholstery and automatic gearbox 130.000km and a “nice price” of 2.900 euro still moving up you get the big ass Suzuki Vitara also made in 97, 130.000km and you only have to pay 3000 euro to have it. For 3.800 euro though you can buy a full options Opel Astra Classic II Sedan 74.000km, 1.6 gasoline engine, built in 2000. Initially it was 4000 euro but the seller eventually got bored and went for a lower price. I think that if someone really wants this car he would probably let it go for 3.600 or maybe even 3.500 euro… Still moving up you get the Mercedes S500, an older model for 8700 and probably the list can go on quite a lot. All these cars were seen on the streets in what is quite a small city, but buying a car here is quite easy compared to what you see back home. The price for gasoline is also nicer than in Holland, it’s around 1.25 euro per liter instead of 1.50.
This brings me to another aspect. The cars you see on the streets. Apart from all the cars that you normally see in a small city and the cars that are considered hot these days (like the mean looking Hummer H3 or Porsche) you occasionally run into a gorgeous ’50s Jag XK120 or a ‘58 Triumph TR3A
Circulation is quite OK once you accept the fact that nobody signals any maneuver. I was riding my bicycle in traffic the other day and it was quite an adventure. You really have reasons to wear your helmet. You have to watch out at least twice as much as you would in a normal country. And at some junction I saw this little Mercedes B klasse with the blinkers on and I went like wtf? When I looked at the plates it was all clear. The guy was from Germany. I think this explains all the scratches and bumps you see on all the cars here. And it could be so simple… just use your damn blinkers… Oh well.. cars being so inexpensive it probably doesn’t matter much…
Enjoy guys and use your lights!
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
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!
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