Category: Personal

Despite being at work all the time, and being constantly busy, I am still a human. I am social. I have a life, family, and friends. I have thoughts and experiences. Once in a while I share them, and when I do, I do so in this category. If you don’t know me personally, chances are you’ll find posts in this category particularly boring.

Back from Amsterdam. Overview.

I am back from my trip to Amsterdam, Netherlands.  It was as good as I expected and sometimes even better.  I really enjoyed my time over there, met a quite a few interesting people, established a few useful relationships, saw some interesting technologies, photographed a beautiful city, tasted some nice beers, and more.

I brought back a few hundred photos, which took me a few hours to sort through.  Now that I am done there are just over a hundred pictures which I hope you will enjoy once they are all uploaded.  I also have quite a few posts backlogged. They are mostly in a form of notes right now, so I’ll need to expand them a bit and will publish in the next few days.

Just to give you a few highlights:

  • Amsterdam is a beautiful city.  I hope I will have a chance to visit it again.
  • I didn’t manage to visit a coffee shop, red lights district, or any of the recommended restaurants.  I was having enough fun without following any of recommendations.  Probably will do so next time.
  • People over there are tall indeed.  Very tall.
  • People over there ride bicycles even when it is cold and raining.  The city infrastructure is very supportive of cyclists, but I need to read some more about their traditions and history, because current bicycle penetration in the population is much deeper than just city infrastructure.
  • I haven’t seen any cops on the streets.  Not even traffic police.
  • There is lots of fighting with tobacco smoking.  Many places (like my hotel for example) completely ban smoking and don’t even have places for smoking.  Very nice.
  • I’ll need to write a separate post about trains.
  • It was interesting to see canals and so much water transport in operation.
  • The conference was a success.  I met a few interesting people, saw some useful technologies, and brought back a few thoughts on how things should move on.

As you can see, there is a lot to post about.  Stay tuned.

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Tomorrow morning I am leaving for The Next Web Conference, which will take place in Amsterdam, Netherlands.  I spent a few minutes in Wikipedia, reading about both Amsterdam and Netherlands.  Here are some interesting highlights (direct quotes from Wikipedia):

  • The Netherlands is often called Holland. This is formally incorrect as North and South Holland in the western Netherlands are only two of the country’s twelve provinces. As a matter of fact, many Dutch people colloquially use Holland as a synecdoche, being well aware of the widespread use of this name.
  • The Netherlands is also one of the most densely cabled countries in the world; its internet connection rate is 87.8%, the 2nd highest in the world.
  • A remarkable aspect of the Netherlands is its flatness.
  • The people of the Netherlands are amongst the tallest in the world, with an average height of about 1.85 m (6 ft 0.8 in) for adult males and 1.68 m (5 ft 6 in) for adult females.
  • There is a tradition of learning foreign languages in the Netherlands: about 70% of the total population have good knowledge of English, 55– 59% of German and 19% of French.
  • Amsterdam is the 5th busiest tourist destination in Europe with more than 4.2 million international visitors. The room occupation rate is the 2nd highest in Europe in 2007. Tourists can choose from 350 Hotels, 17 of which are fivestar hotels. 18,000 rooms and almost 45,000 beds are provided.
  • Amsterdam’s largest religious group are the Calvinists followed by Islam, mainly Sunni Islam.
  • Amsterdam is one of the most bicycle-friendly cities in the world and is a centre of bicycle culture with good provision for cyclists such as bike paths and bike racks, which are ubiquitous throughout the city. There are an estimated one million bicycles in the city (total population is 742,884 people, as per January 1st, 2006). However, bike theft is common, so cyclists use large secure locks.

    Quake III LAN party

    Quake III LAN party

    I spent most of yesterday in Nicosia, playing Quake III with a few guys.  It’s been a few years since the last time I attended a LAN party, so it was nice to see some familiar faces after all these years of playing online.

    I was a bit surprised by the fact that more people turned up for the Quake 3 party than they did the last time.  I thought maybe with more games being released each year, Quake 3 community is getting smaller and weaker.  I was glad to see that it is not the case.  The game is still popular and there are plenty of both seasoned players and fresh meat.

    After a few hours of Quaking we had some pizza and then, shortly, moved to a bar for a couple of pints, where we met some more people.  Overall we managed to have some really good fun and enjoyed ourselves.  As we always say, we should do it more often…

    P.S.: Thanks to all who helped with the trip and the party.  In particular, my brother, who was driving, and snoop, who was hosting the event.

    P.P.S.: If you haven’t yet clicked on the picture above, here are some more photos.

    He hates me, but it’s OK

    Today I was at my bank. I had to cash a check, as well as do a couple of other small things. While at that, I decided to open a credit card. I have some cards already, but not one in Euro. So, they send me upstairs to see this guy there. He is responsible for credit cards, overdrafts, loans, and things like that. I’ve seen him before a few times.

    This guy hates me. It’s OK though, because I think he hates everybody. Probably, he is very good at his job, since he is paid to hate everyone. People who will max out their overdrafts, overdue payments, etc – he is the one who filters them out. And it surely helps to hate them all.

    Every time I enter his office he looks at me like he is trying to decide who is more worthless a Cypriot woman or a foreign man. He tries to remember anything good about Cypriot women. His wife and mother-in-law come to mind. That disgusts the heck out of him. Then he looks at me, measures me from top to bottom and back to top, makes a face like he just ate a huge cockroach, and decides that his mother-in-law is a little bit better than I am. Then he says: “Good morning”. These two words express more than some people will manage to express in their whole life. These two words have the whole world inside them, the world where I am at the bottom of the food chain, and this guy is floating above the top… or something like that.

    Usually, the visit to his office kind of offsets my day. He doesn’t freak me out or depress me or anything. But there is this sour feeling for the rest of the day, after I see him. But not today. Today he had no way of saying “no” to me. As much as he wanted to decline my request, send me as far as possible, and forget about me as fast as possible, he couldn’t do anything. He had to say “yes”.

    That “yes” was as expressive as the “Good morning”. It made my day. Maybe even a week. Maybe even more. Any time that I will ever feel down and depressed, I will be coming back to read this post. It’s a booster.

    P.S.: obviously, I am not going to mention the bank, the branch, or the guy’s name, but some of you can guess it as easily anyway.

    Catching up

    Once again, so many things and so little time… Here is a catch up post with a few highlights:

    • Olga and Maxim are still in Russia.  I miss them a lot, but, considering the circumstances, they should rather be there than here.  Still, miss them a lot.
    • Our cat Cappa has been sterilized. I know it’s for the better and all, but I’m still filled with guilt.  It’s not right to do this, even if it is for the better.  That was the first and last time that I did it.
    • I am still going to the gym.  Lost a bit of weight (about 3 kilos) in the last couple of weeks. Exercises are still boring and painful, as they always were.
    • I am doing a lot of training at work.  At least 2 hours per week in group sessions, and at least another 4 hours in individual ones.  Topics cover everything from how computers work, through PHP/CSS/MySQL/HTML, to SEO and web promotion.  It’s nice to see some sparks.  Not fires yet, but we aren’t finished yet.
    • I still write plenty of code.  In the last week there was a huge leap from WordPress and home made systems to CakePHP framework. This framework is truly wonderful, but I have a lot to learn about programming MVC-kind. Including some of the terminology.
    • I am watching a lot of movies. There happen to be a DVD rental right next to our office. I am so out of touch with movies world that I can grab a handful of movies, that I haven’t heard anything behind, in less than a minute.  I’ll post some short reviews right after this post is online.
    • I have totally abandoned photography, which I am truly sad of. I need to get back to it one of these days.  Especially now that I got invited as an official photographer to one of the upcoming events.  More on that a bit later.

    That’s my life in a nutshell.