ahmedeus

So, some of you might have seen me hold this pose...

In case you're wondering, this is an immitation of Ed Corney (seen below), a classic bodybuilder.

So, during my Sweden trip while travelling with Rickard, we thought we'd try multiple high speed capture of me holding the pose. So, I made an animation from those frames. So, here's The Ahmed Compass Pose Enjoy. Credit to Rickard for taking the photos.

Sooo.. finally managed to write the promise post (sorry Ricki). Yes, I have been really lazy in terms of blogging, I admit that, but there's a very good reason. I had my B'day. Plus busy with parties, planning holidays, etc.. I am just busy at the moment setting up a few things for the flat, and hopefully will be free to load lots of photos from many holidays since my last post.

Till then. Ciao.

After having a good break in October ’07 (Swiss Tour), I awaited the most historic event, and that is seeing Paco de Lucia LIVE!!!

On 5 November ’07 we saw Paco de Lucia perform live at the KKL in Luzern. “Who is Paco de Lucia?” you ask. Paco de Lucia (or as Duncan and I call him Pako di Looth-ya) is a guitar legend, a living icon of Flamenco guitar since the start of 20th century! More about him at his personal site or Wiki. His ticket was not so cheap (150.- CHF), but watching the guy live was f@!#%?kin’ amazing, at the same time made me feel like a real guitar n00b!

After the Paco de Lucia concert I was the cook at Chantale’s birthday party. Never thought BBQ’ing for a group of 50+ people can keep me really busy, especially when the grill had unlabeled broken knobs and not enough lighting at the start. But the party was great, good organization, there was lots of MEAT and food (esp. bread)!

Last Saturday, thanks to Julianna, scored free tickets to see an opera for the first time. Loved the music (Julianna was playing the piccolo), but watching men and women telling a story by screaming with music in the background seemed a bit repetitive, especially when they sang in Italian. The cool thing is having German subtitles while people perform live :) So got an idea what they were yelling and screaming about.

On Wednesday last week it finally snowed here (earlier than last year), and yesterday headed up Rigi with Philipp. Of course, no walk through snow is free from a snow fight, and like always, I won the snow fight! The weather on Rigi and the views were fantastic, photos are here.

Last weekend was spent in Portugal with Dani, Brad and Ronni. Thanks to Dani, we got tickets to the open air music festival outside Lisbon for 5 days. We had our tents with us to camp near the festival area. Finding a good camping spot (anywhere) was impossible, even a day before the festival started.

The trip was pretty cool, the camp site had lots of hippies, and people got really drunk to the point they were annoying. People woke us up one day with a horn at 6am, then the next day with a drum, and our last night I did not sleep at all, as there was a group of people just drumming the whole night, so that was cool to watch and listen to.

There were drums everywhere, the hippies brought their dejmbes and doumbeks, which is make me feel like buying a drum, so I am preparing for some money spending soon. There were even drums attached to seats in the festival for people to go and drum while sitting around the drum, pretty cool!

The weather was perfect, and most of the time was spent at the beach with the perfect weather, and then later on have lunch and then head back to the music festival at night. The music festival had some known artists, which we didn't know were playing, e.g. Cypress Hill, Pink Floyed (I think it was a cover bank, but sounded really good), etc... All types of music, dance, rap, reggae, rock, alternative, techno, really good mix.

The organization of the festival was OK. There were good things like handing out freebies, free transportation between the camp/festival area to the beach. However, the dirt at the camp site was the worst I've seen, and the toilets smelled really bad. The toilets were cleaned everyday, but people were usually careless.

Unfortunately I didn't take my SLR, but took photos with my Casio camera. The photos are here. I have some videos too, which I will try and upload soon.

Something I did not expect to see, which I really miss, is a steak pie! While going through the market near the Costa Vicentina, I noticed a shiny stainless steel oven calling me like mirage to a lost man in a desert. The pies were not as good as the dairy pies in NZ, but the best in Europe so far. I was their favourite customer for the next couple of days, which scored me a free pie at the end har har har...

Returning from beautiful sunny weather at the beach, I returned to rainy weather in Luzern. The weather was also random during the Blue Balls festival. A few Blue Balls photos are here.


 

¡Hola!

Last week I got back from my first proper annual holiday since I got here. I spent a week traveling in Spain then spent a few more days in Geneva before going back to work on Thursday.

The trip in Spain was awesome, the weather was perfect (want proof? look here), had everything planned and set, so just had to relax and travel around. The week in Spain was spent in 3 cities, scattered all over the country. We were in Madrid, Granada and Barcelona. The trip photos are here. I will be posting a video with clips from the trip.

Madrid (pronounced Madrith) was the first stop, the capital in the heart of Spain. We stayed in the heart of the city for 1 day, and had a tour around the whole city, then headed to watch the infamous Spanish Bull Fight. I am no vegetarian, and don't believe animals should be killed for amusement, but just wanted to see what the whole thing is all about. The atmosphere is really something special, and I can imagine the skills and courage required to face a bull that's charging at you. However, the whole thing is really cruel to the animal, after watching 6 bulls killed (the bulls were young, 2 years old, they are usually three  to be part of bull fights), here's the pattern summerized:

1. make the bull go nuts by making him run around the ring from one side to the other using the coloured capes;
2. start stabbing the bull in the back with a spear by a guy on a horse (to make an opening in the bull's back) as seen here;
3. Matadors (bull fighters) start stabbing the bull with sticks that hook on to the Bull's back like this;
4. the main Matador plays a bit with the bull, to make him tired and increase the bleeding (mainly showmanship) like this;
5. the Matador is handed a special sword (bent at the tip) to stab the bull in the back, shown here;
6. The bull might bleed badly and die, or just collapse. Then people come and clean up.

The Madrid photos are here.

Granada (pronounced Grenatha) part of Andalusia, was my favourite city during the whole trip, it felt the most Spanish. First day we toured the city, tried Paella and Ox meat (I said above, I am no vegetarian), then we attended an open air flamenco concert, guitar music, with clapping, singing and dancing.. perfect!

The second day in Grenada was spent in the Alhambra. Alhambra is one of the remaining tangible remains of the Islamic civilization/empire, the whole place is amazing. Given the fact the whole place is just historical remains, but it was one of the things I really enjoyed in Spain. The science, architecture, art and atmosphere in the palace is really something special. I highly recommend Alhambra if you want to learn about part of Spain's history. If you plan to go to Alhambra, make sure you reserve the tickets a few days before waiting in the queues, there are limited tickets per day.

The other cool thing about Granada is the streets are full of old buildings/remains and guitar shops are every where. Of course, flamenco was a result of music played by gypsies, so you'll see a lot of gypsies around Granada.

The Granada photos are here. 

Barcelona (pronounced Barthelona) one of Spain's most popular. A very large touristy city, full of architecture and attractions, a must for anyone interested in shopping/fashion. Barcelona is very big, and I think you'll need at least 3 days (we only spent a day and a half), to see the whole city, but the time I spent there is enough.

The Barcelona photos are here. 

Overall, Spain is a country that I would recommend visiting. The life style in Spain is really different to the rest of Europe, siestas, late dinners, for example, we had dinner at 12 mid-night and the restaurant had queues outside it for people to get a table!

After visiting Spain, there are certain things which I found good, and some not so good:

Good:

• Shops and restaurants opened late;
• Good food;
  
• Everyone on the street is helpful;
• Weather is great;
• City public transport is good and cheap.
  

Not So Good:

• Pickpocketing (didn't happen to me, but witnessed one in front of me);
• There's no such thing as precision, flight between Granada and Barcelona was 40 mins late, flight from Madrid to Zürich was 20 mins late, train from Barcelona to Madrid was 60 mins late, only the bus service from Madrid to Granada was accurate. The Metro is really good though, on time and cheap;
  
• English is not spoken by everyone;
• People are very friendly and helpful, but people working in shops and offices need to work on that a bit more, it's like they expect you to pay them for answering your questions. 

So, overall, I would like to visit Spain again, but can not see myself living there. Once you get used to a certain standard that matters to you, then it's hard to go back to something lower. Just like when you buy a new PC, it's nice and fast, few months (if not weeks) later, you just want to kick the box because it's not fast enough (hope this analogy helped).

After returning to Zürich, the Spaniards lost 1 bag with a fragile piece in it, which arrived late and shattered into pieces, this is another thing I did not like about Spain. So returned to Zürich from hot sunny weather to cold rain!!! After receiving the lost bag on Monday, we headed to Geneva hoping the weather would be better, but it wasn't. However, visiting Geneva was a change within the same country, it was like visiting France, everyone speaking French, and for some reason, it really reminded me of Paris, but we were still in Cheeseland.

Geneva is nice and beautiful, and the photos are here.

Now I am back to work, and preparing for the next short break coming up soon. Till then, taken care. 

Since my arrival to Switzerland in July 2006, I was really keen on trying Paragliding and Hang gliding, do tandem flights with an instructor (mentioned here and here). However, I was kept busy upon my arrival here, I did not manage to do that. So, on 31.03.2007 Duncan got me a paragliding lesson for my birthday! This is definitely one of the cool gifts I've ever received on my birthday, thoughtful and what I had on my mind for some time, and it's really appreciated. Cheers Duncan for the perfect gift!

By the way people, if you want your gift to be added to the list of cool birthday gifts for me (^_^) , I recommend you start saving for my dream electronic drum kit, the Roland TD-20 for the low price of 8000 Swiss Francs :)  (watch this YouTube video for a demo) Don't be shocked by that big number, the exchange rate should sort things out ;)

So, Duncan and I took our flying lesson on Saturday 19.05.2007, we were lucky with the weather. The weather was perfect (as shown here) after a week of randomness. So, we headed to the school in Emmetten, after watching a video in German (at that point I appreciated my German lessons), we headed to the field to start the fun part (except walking up the hill with the paragliding gear, but the experience is definitely worth it).

Photos from our first lesson are here. Below are the videos viewable in this page.

This was my last jump for the day, this was from the highest point we went that day (I have no idea what that scream is at 0:15).

Duncan taking off from the highest point from that day, I think this was his second last jump.

Roland was the first person to take off, this is his first jump.

On of the students from a different group was taking off before us.