Hello Kitty gift

Aurelie brought me a present back from Japan for my birthday. It’s a Hello Kitty dressed in a kimono.

Because it’s Japan, wrapping is as important, if not more important, as the gift itself. The Hello Kitty was packed in a Hello Kitty wrapping paper closed by a Hello Kitty seal and carefully placed in a Hello Kitty bag.

Opening this present was quite an experience and the Japanese Hello Kitty is very cute. Now what shall I hang to it? The car key?

Birthday girl

Today was my birthday.

I received cards, calls, emails, sms, messages on Facebook from my family and friends.

The highlight of the day was when the whole team sang for me after lunch. As much as I was very touched by the gesture, I felt very uncomfortable having to stand while 30 people sang Happy Birthday to me. I don’t like being under the “spotlight”.

In the absence of Wolfram, Aurelie took me out to dinner to my favorite restaurant and I received a Hello Kitty dressed in kimono from Japan. Really cute.

Now is time to go to bed. I’m exhausted… I guess that’s what happens when you age or like my colleagues said “become more mature”.

THANK YOU EVERYBODY FOR THINKING OF ME TODAY.

PS: for those who wonder,  it was a Monopoly game that was wrapped in the Minnie paper gift. Anyone wants to play?

I know someone who's going to be happy

Billing info

Taking advantage of Wolfram being in the US for 2 weeks I ordered last Friday new pants on Gap/Banana Republic online. This way I was sure to get the right model/color/size with no need for Wolfram to visit all the Gap shops of Cincinnati.

Today around 4pm I received an email asking me to call the customer service. Now what? I was already annoyed.

I called; I hold the line until someone was free and finally got in touch with a lady. I gave my order number and she checked what the problem was. They could not confirm my billing information. Quid?

Apparently the name for the billing address I gave is not matching the name on the credit card. Hum… no wonder… I explained that I live in Belgium, used my French credit card to order pants to be delivered to my partner in the US at his hotel. I did put his name for the bill so they don’t have to send a bill to Belgium. It’s cheaper and easier for them. Well it should be.

“Excuse me, could you clarify in which state is the billing address for this credit card?”

“France, in Europe”

“Silence”

Of course this was a VERY complex situation which she didn’t know how to solve. I told her that I find it unbelievable that I can order anything I want from Amazon US from Europe but can’t do it with Banana Republic. I’m so disappointed. She asked for a moment to talk to her manager.

When she was back on line, she told me they would process my order, apologized for the confusion and promised it would be delivered within 7 working days, as of Friday when I did place the order.

I love the US for that. If you start complaining, they are so afraid you would sue, they simply do whatever you want.

Nike Plus

Since we enrolled for the 20K in Paris, Alice and I have been training i.e. walking 1-2 times a week at a minimum of 7.3km/h (i.e. the minimum speed we should maintain to complete the 20K in 2h45 our target).
Today unfortunately Alice had a side stitch so we had to slow down pretty much 15min after we started. This said we did walk the whole distance at a slow pace.
This was also the first day I was trying out Nike Plus. I discovered that my iPhone is fully equipped for Nike Plus, which allows you to track your performance, combine it with music, have a "coach" motivating you as you go and record your runs. Nike Plus targets runners but the system works very well for walkers as well.
Proof... today we walked 13.44 km, in 2h19min and you can see below our statistics through the country side around the house.

I was skeptical at the beginning and I have to say I positively surprised by how well it tracked us.

Now we need to get back on the road and set our new best time because honestly an average pace of 10min/km is far from where we want to be.

Now what

It's 11am. Since I woke up this morning...
... I dropped Wolfram at the airport
... I went to the bakery
... I went swimming
... I started the washing machine
... I vacuumed
... I changed the cat loo
...I called my parents
It's incredible what you can do when you wake up at 7:30am on a Sunday.
Still, now what? Lunch with Alice is only in 1.5h, it's too early for a nap, I could bake but the main cake eater of the house just left. I guess I'll do what I never have time to do: read while petting Mokka.

Contradiction

Based on the latest study by the OECD, Belgium appears to be the country where people work the less. This study is counting on number of working hours, nothing to do with how productive you are. One could spend 12h a day drinking coffee in the office.

Strangely this does not resonate with my current agenda and long working days. I guess a few have to work harder so the majority can relax.

Finally

I've been dreaming of it for many years... Now I will have them!
Just an impulsive purchase this morning because it was on sale. I can use my upcoming birthday as an excuse :)

Hasta luego

After 5 days of amazing weather, 2 days of exploration and 3 days of work, it’s time to go home.

Bye bye Madrid!

Crazy streets

During the research the translator and I walked from one house to the other. The challenge was not the distance or the heat. It was that one street basically covers a block. Forget about a straight line. At a crossing you can be on Calle de Ezcaray and facing 2 other streets with the same name. It felt like a labyrinth.

Churches in Madrid

Visiting a church in Madrid is almost mission impossible.


First you have those which are not open on the weekends.
Second you have those that are open on the weekends but between 9am and 1pm only.
Third you have those that are open on the weekends but are under renovation, i.e. no one can enter them.

Fourth, one you manage to find a church that is open on weekends, with a compatible schedule and not under renovation, it’s not worth it. There is nothing to see in it.

Frustrating!

Mailboxes

These are the original ones, not in use anymore since the post-office is now the city hall.

Parco del Retiro

Or the Central Park of Madrid.
On Sunday it is the place to be. All the people from Madrid come to this park to have a picnic, a run, a ride in a boat, take a nap in the shadow of the tree, buy fake bags or DVDs, eat salty snacks, chat, etc. the usual Sunday activities in Madrid.

As for me, it turned out that the park is full of mosquitoes. Without any surprise they attacked me. Without any surprise the next morning my legs had doubled. Lesson for the future: always pack the mosquito repellant even when I go for a city trip.

Museo del Prado

THE famous museum of Madrid where I didn’t get to go because someone decided that it was such a beautiful weather it would be a pity to waste it inside a museum. It is true but who knows when I will have the opportunity to come again to Madrid?

Estación de Madrid Atocha

The Atocha train station is a very surprising train station. Right in the middle of it there is an oasis. Rail tracks have been moved further to accommodate palm trees and… turtles.
I grabbed my now legendary wide angle lens for a shot that hopefully captures the oasis that stands in the middle of a train station.

Of course what kept us busy was something smaller than the huge palm trees. Somehow we manage to spend a good 30 minutes taking pictures of the turtles. I’m glad we didn’t have a train to catch that day, as we would have missed it for sure, lost in turtle land.

Feed me – turtle

Key challenge when taking a picture from a turtle from far away is that turtles are not as still as one could believe. They move slowly, but they move messing up with your shot.

Painting on the move

Roofs of Madrid

When you see the roofs from above you understand how easy it is for anyone to run from one building to the other via the roof.

Tapas!

We managed to avoid having meals in restaurants. We preferred tapas bar i.e. we ordered small bits and pieces of many things and enjoy every one of them. This is not the proper way as we quickly understood when the waiter started to walk away after we picked 4 tapas while we wanted a couple more. The trick is not to order them altogether but rather one at a time, preferably with another glass of wine.

We loved the ham croquettes: croquetas de jamon. That’s clearly our all time winner.

We love Spanish ham, as such, on a toast, in a croquette, on top of eggs… it doesn’t matter how it’s served, we ate it with great pleasure.

Despite Tortilla doesn’t come with ham, we enjoyed it quite a lot as well. We preferred it warm but one can eat it cold as well.

Only negative is that food in Spain is pretty greasy. Most things are fried one way or another. That’s probably what makes them so good.
I know one thing for sure. After 5 days in Spain it will take me 2 weeks of hard exercise to eliminate the damage. In my defense, I just can’t resist to their croquetas de jamon.

Colors & Structures in Madrid

Each building is telling a story.

Plaza Mayor

Plaza Mayor is the central plaza of Madrid. It is impressive but somehow I was not convinced. Maybe because there were too many people, maybe there were too many “street comedians”, maybe there was too much noise, I don’t know what it was but it didn’t click.

I did give it a shot with my wide angle lens (twice in one day, it was really a good purchase) to recreate the feeling of the square shaped plaza.

Apart from its architecture, Plaza Mayor is famous for its painted facades.

Only interesting piece for me was the carving on a bench. I know I’m in this huge plaza and all I pay attention to are little characters telling a story on a bench.

Surprisingly, on a fence I found locks with names on it. Like in Pont des Arts in Paris, some people have sealed their love on Plaza Mayor. That’s sweet.

Palacio real and Plaza de Oriente

On our way to the Palacio Real we encountered a demonstration. No clue what they were demonstrating about but we had to make a detour through the little streets of the center to reach the palace.


Like in Belgium the king does not live in the palace (sometimes you wonder why we keep them). At least in Spain tourists and diplomats can visit it, and some of the halls are used for exhibition. Entrance is not for free and by the time we got there, there was a 500m queue. Facing the choice of queuing or taking a picture from behind the fence and move on… we stayed behind the fence.
And this created the perfect opportunity for me to use my brand new wide angle lens.

We then walked further to the Plaza de Oriente where plan was to have lunch. By now it’s 2:30pm, right on time for lunch according to Spanish habits. Following the reco from the guide, we found a café with a terrace and enjoyed lunch with view on the palace… ah, that’s how life should be!

I wanted to take a picture of the statue, which I did. This motivated Wolfram to try a few things with his camera.

So I waited. And I had company.

After 5 long minutes my new friend passed by the other way around and asked whether Wolfram was done. “Not yet I said”. 

So we waited a bit longer because it takes time to take great pictures.
I've also established that I do not have enough patience for that. I give it 3 shots. After that I move on, in peace with my choice of average pictures :)

Typical scene of a Mediterranean street

Street names

While walking through the streets of Madrid I quickly notice that in this city street names are much nicer than usual. They are colored and usually come with a little drawing representing what it is.

Much better than the plain ones we see in most cities. One could spend hours exploring the streets and having a look at all of them (but I did not want to repeat the looong collection of pictures of the Hollywood bvd stars).

30 minutes in Spain

We’re staying at the same hotel I stayed last time and also were some of my research will happen. Indeed it’s convenient for me but above all hotel Tryp Atocha is located right in the center, walking distance from everything there is to see.

Room was not ready when we arrived. The receptionist told us it would take 30minutes. Naively we decided to wait so we could drop our suitcases and change before exploring the city.
Of course 30 min Spanish time means longer than that. Up to 1 hour actually. I was getting pissed of wasting time waiting in the lobby when we could have been outside.

Eventually our room was ready, we could change, load the cameras and multiple lenses in our backpacks and hit the road, direction Palacio Real.

Bienvenidos a Madrid

The good thing about having a research in Madrid right after a long weekend is that we can spend the weekend exploring the city. And that’s what we did. Saturday morning, we took a flight to Madrid, leaving behind rain and cold for sun and heat.
2min outside and I already feel better. The power of sun!

PS: Aircraft was nearly empty. I really don’t understand why they don’t sell those tickets half price 2 days before. They would fill in planes and we would have cheap tickets for city trips.

Training started

After our successful 20K of Brussels, Alice and I are highly motivated to repeat our achievement in Paris. Thus we enrolled ourselves to the 20K of Paris, on October 9th. Another big element of motivation is that the race will take you through Paris and that should make it an enjoyable race. Can't wait to be at the Eiffel tower!

This time however we will train. Basically we have a bit more than 3 months to be ready and one target: 20km in 2h45min i.e. an average speed of 7.3km/h (for comparison our average speed in Brussels was 6.92km/h).
Doesn’t seem much but last night I tried 7.3km/h for 1 hour on the treadmill and it’s hard. From 6.9 to 7.2km/h it’s faster but manageable. 7.3km/h for some reasons is harder.

So we’ve got 120 days to train on walking at least at 7.3km/h. Let the fun begin!

Good question

"Honey, why do you have to work so much?"

Wolfram - 11:30pm

Excellent question. Because..
a) Too much work, not enough people, sadly it's becoming the rule:(
b) I'm really passionate about what I do (and it's taking us to Madrid this weekend)
c) I'm competing with my sister :)

Color bars

Lately we've been watching "old movies" trying to broaden our cinematographic knowledge. Tonight we watched Charade with Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant.

In the menu, beside "Play the movie" or "The trailer", there was an intriguing "Color Bars". Curious, we selected it and what did we see on the screen?

Color bars indeed.
Sometimes things are simply what they are.

Descente de la Lesse en Kayak

I had heard of that there is a river in the Ardennes where one can do Kayak. Several weeks ago Aurelie mentioned it to me as one of the things she’s always wanted to do but never got to it. Luck stroke and the following week there was an offer for Kayak Libert on Groupon. We bought, of course.

Today was the big day, carefully selected avoiding weekends to limit the crowd. Wolfram and I drove to Aurelie and Romain’s place, loaded the car with their half of the picnic and hit the road direction Anseremme and the river Lesse.

We parked the car at the arrival of the journey and took a bus to Houyet, the starting point of the 22-kilometer kayak ride on the Lesse.

The “launch” is a bit scary as they literally launch you in your kayak in the river. Except, unlike in Disneyland, if you miss your landing, you end up for sure in the water. With lots of screaming both kayaks made it on the water, with their load still inside and dry. Now the fun starts.

 Unlike Romain who masterizes kayaking, the rest of us had to figure out how to paddle straight and move forward. The first 2-3km were huge fun because Wolfram and I never managed to go straight. Over the course of the day we improved but the facts are simple: we’re amazing at slaloming, why bother going straight?

At a descent pace, we paddled down the river. Surprisingly the level of water was pretty low and they were placing with barely 30cm of water. This lead to the bottom of the kayak touching the rocks in the river. Doesn’t help your self-confidence when you touch the rocks where others don’t or even worse get stuck on one. Once stuck, it's up to you to use your paddle to push on the rocks, your weight to move the kayak or step down and push the kayak. There is a strategy for everybody.

After a couple of hours paddling we reached the half way point and stopped for a picnic. We had bread, ham, tomatoes, cheese, cake and wine. Nothing to complain, this was a very good picnic. Only scary part was the 3 millions of kayaks passing in front of us. While the first half of the journey was very peaceful and we barely met anyone, the second half looked more like a highway jammed during rush hours.

We tried to sneak in between waves but unfortunately there was no way to avoid the crowd. That was truly the big negative point of the day as paddling in between other kayaks is not fun at all. Even scarier, apparently this was not a busy day. I can’t imagine what it looks like with more people.
We still had good fun going down the 2 small slides further down the river. We managed to avoid flipping the kayak around. The kayak reached nearly 90 degree vs. the water but still we didn’t flip. We were soaked but still in the kayak! From what Aurelie told us, they would have bet we would flip. I guess it must have looked as bad as it felt.
Painfully we finished the 22km in roughly 4 hours, faster than the crowd. The last 3km were really tough as we were tired and the wind was blowing in our face. With sore muscles (thanks Wolfram for paddling the most and the strongest) and blisters on the hands (that’s me) we made it. It was exhausting but definitely worth the effort… especially the first half as there is nothing to compare slowly going down the river under the sun.

Long weekend

3 days of work
4 days of weekend
Why isn't it always like that?

Arms

I was expecting sore legs after the 20K and I had them. Monday walking was painful but thanks to Wolfram’s massage and stretching it was not that bad… especially when I compare myself to others.


What I had not anticipated was sore arms. I walked 20 kilometers and the part of my body that hurt the most the day after, and the following one, and the following one: my arms. This teaches me that when you walk fast or “power walk” as it is called, one uses his arms quite a lot.
Luckily for me today was swimming day so I could work the pain from the walk out of my arms but at the cost of very difficult first 15min swimming.

Next time I walk 20K, I’ll not only train in advance but will stretch my arms as well afterwards.