Serenity in Alcalá

 

Two years without going back to Spain. About to get back home now with a handful of nice photos and a load of memories

Reminiscing about Moscow

Hoy hace 25 años (que se dice pronto) de mi vuelta a España después de pasar seis semanas en Moscú haciendo unas prácticas de verano en el Moscow Aviation Institute a través de IAESTE. Aunque el rendimiento académico de esas semanas fue más bien escueto, guardo muy buen recuerdo por todo lo demás, en particular el grupo de gente de varios países que nos juntamos. Muchos años más tarde una chica griega de ese grupito vino a Berlín a casa de visita y todavía hoy seguimos en contacto, y yo estuve en las bodas de otras dos, una chica rusa en Madrid y otra suiza en St Gallen. 

Aunque hice unas cuantas fotos, ni por asomo todas las que habría hecho hoy. Y de la calidad de la cámara y de las fotos, mejor hablamos otro día. Que pena no haber tenido un smartphone entonces para también hacer un par de videos, como cuando los payasos nos sacaron a un chico egipcio y a mí a la pista para ser el blanco de sus bromas. Pero por entonces no tenía ni siquiera teléfono :-)

Por cierto, en inglés hay una palabra que significa disfrutar de un recuerdo agradable de eventos pasados (reminiscing, indulge in enjoyable recollection of past events).

Once in a lifetime

Cracked Disc

I only have 5 or 6 discs. This one is cracked but I cannot get myself to dispose of it.

WUGC Heilbronn 2000 - España

We played ten games that week, four from the initial round robin on Sunday and Monday, then on Tuesday we lost against Italy and won against Ireland, 13-15 on a really tight game. On Wednesday we lost against both Netherlands and Russia and then also against South Africa on Thursday. We played one final game on Saturday against Taiwan again, 15-6 for us. Of course I could not remember any of this twenty years later, but I found an old agenda in which I had scribbled the games and the results, hopefully they are accurate. (edit: Espiau pointed me to the scores)

In between games, there were also training sessions, not to forget the parties. All in all, although I was reasonably fit twenty years ago, by the end of the week I was so intensely tired that there is a photo of me sleeping while "watching" the final game in the "stadium" between USA and Sweden.

 

Team España

Albert, Curt, Eric, Gabriel, Kaleen, Óscar, María José, Miquel, Peter, Rocky, Sofía, Stratton, Tim, Tino, Ignacio, Luis Alberto, Francisco, Juan Carlos, José

After one of the games with Taiwan

World Ultimate Frisbee Championship - Heilbronn 2000 - Opening Ceremony and Team España

Opening ceremony (and the day I first met my team mates!) was on August 5th. There was a tournament newsletter and they had an article featuring Team España a couple of days later!

 

07. August 2000 

Ultimate España 

There is not a very long history of disc sports in Spain. Most Spaniards 
think of a Frisbee as „that plastic thing you bring to the beach". When you 
mention Ultimate as a sport, they say „Que?" 
Though there are only about 70 ultimate players 
currently playing in Spain, it seems that Spanish 
Ultimate is finally getting off the ground. This is 
the first year that a Spanish Team is competing at 
a World level and players have come together 
from Barcelona, Madrid, and Gran Canaria to 
form the team. 

The history of Spanish ultimate starts about 5 
years ago when a group of people started playing 
in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, 
eventually taking the name of Pio Pio. Within 2 
months they went to France to participate in the 
European championships. But since then, only a 
few players have been able to travel to tour- 
naments - they are closer to Africa than they are 
to mainland Spain. Still, over the years they've 
continued to play with the spirit that typifies 
Ultimate and have grown to approximately 15 
players. They hosted their first beach hat 
tournament in March 2000 which gave all the 
Canary players a chance to play in a tournament 
and left everybody else begging for it to be 
repeated annually. 

Independently, Barcelona's Patatas Bravas began 
playing in the winter of 1998 when the Ultimate 
gods conspired to bring several players together 
who had all played in other places. After realizing 
that nobody would get up before 1 pm on a week- 
end, practices were moved to late afternoon and 
Ultimate addicts were created. Since then, 
the Patatas Bravas have participated in tour- 
namets in Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy 
and Portugal. The team currently has 25 players 
and is comprised of "Catalan/Spanish and" 
foreign players. I guess Ultimate is still a bit of a 
beach thing in Spain because both Pio Pio and the 
Bravas practice on the beach, bare foot, all the 
time. The sun in Spain is great, but one of the 
drawbacks is its effect on grass fields! The Bravas 
also organize a beach hat tournament that was 
first hosted in the fall of 1998 and has since 
become the infamous last European Outdoor tour- 
nament of the year. They're working on bringing in 
more women and getting a juniors team started at 
a local school to try to raise interest and ensure 
that Ultimate will continue. 

The internet age helped contribute to the for- 
mation of Los Quijotes from Madrid. They began 
playing in December of last year after several 
requests came to the Bravas and Eurodisc mailing 
lists requesting information about ultimate in 
Madrid. With 6 names to start with, things 
seemed to take off when Juan Carlos, a Madrileño 
who learned to play ultimate while studying in 
England, took charge of motivating and 
organasing. They have not yet participated in any 
tournaments and are still in the tenuous stages of 
team creation since many members of the initial 
group have moved out of Madrid, including Juan 
Carlos. Hopefully things will keep moving and 
we'll see more ultimate from them in the future. 
Finally, and most recently, a team was started in 
Tenerife, another of the Canary Islands. A lone 
flying Italian initiated a university ultimate course 
last spring in which a group of about 15 students 
participated. The first real competition between 
two Spanish teams has also evolved out of this 
effort with the 2 Canary Island teams traveling to 
play against each other a few times and a final 
competition organized at the end of the course. 
The University de La Laguna, where they also 
have the luxury of grass fields, will offer a year- 
long course again in the upcoming academic 
year. It looks like a lot is happening quickly with 
Ultimate in Tenerife! 

The Spanish team at WUGC 2000 is comprised of 
4 players from Gran Canaria, 1 player from 
Madrid, and 14 players from Barcelona. With so 
few players in the entire country, the selection 
process essentially boiled down to those who 
were interested, eligible, could afford it, and were 
willing to commit to playing and having fun. 
Maybe not the most stringent criteria, but hey, it's 
a start! There are 3 women playing with the team 
since there are not enough women (yet) to form a 
mixed or women's team. Since this is the first time 
Spain is participating, we really don't know what to 
expect. Our main goal is to have as much fun as 
possible and to play as hard as we can. Apart from 
that, we want to find out what diving on the grass 
is all about, see how fast we can run when not in 
15 centimeters of sand, and see if it's possible to 
avoid blisters with those cleats we're supposed to 
wear. No matter what, we're all ready and really 
excited to be here! Kaleen Moriarty, Team España 

WUGC Heilbronn 2000 - T-shirt

Some people exchanged T-shirts after the tournament with participants from other countries. I am glad I didn´t and kept mine.

World Ultimate Frisbee Championship - Heilbronn 2000 (ii)

The tournament`s opening ceremony was in the afternoon of Saturday 5th August. Since I was living in the UK at the time, I somehow managed to join the British team on their trip which really simplified my travel arrangements. I drove to London on Friday evening, staying a few hours in the flat of a friend of a friend until we got on a taxi to Heathrow in the wee hours of Saturday. Once in Germany, someone had arranged a bus from the airport to Heilbronn.

Incidentally, this was the first time for me in Germany (except for a couple of airport transfers in Frankfurt en route to and from Moscow a few years earlier). Little I knew then that I would end up moving to Berlin the following year.

Regarding the seedings and the initial round robin schedule see below. Games were finished at 15 points or at a given time. On our first day, we managed to score just 2 points against GB, however one of points was by one of the women in our team, I cannot remember who. I remember though that someone in the British team got really annoyed about that. No idea about the score with Denmark in the afternoon.

For the second day, the then world champions, Canada, had an early training session with us (15-0) and then in the afternoon we finally managed to win a game, 7-15 against Taiwan. That was on Monday 7th August 2000.

World Ultimate Frisbee Championship - Heilbronn 2000

It´s now twenty years since WUCG 2000 in Heilbronn, the world ultimate frisbee championship in which Spain was participating for the first time (as far as I know). I was very lucky to be part of the Spanish team and have very fond memories of the whole experience.

I first played Ultimate frisbee in high school, which at the time was very unusual in Spain (and probably still is?). Then I didn´t play for many years until I went to England as an Erasmus student in 98. I joined a great group of people coached and led by Aaron Altmann, who was the soul of Alien Nation, the Ultimate frisbee team at Cranfield University. Back in Madrid the following year, I helped founding Los Quijotes in Madrid in mid/late 1999 while serving in the Air Force (conscription was still a thing back then), until I left for UK in early 2000 to work for Rolls-Royce. There was no team in Derby, so I joined a team from Nottingham, SuperFly. Then I moved to Berlin in late 2001 and joined Discipuli, one of teams training at TiB1848, with which I continued playing for a few years.

So this week will be a bit of a throwback, posting some memorabilia that I kept from WUGC 2000 all these years.

#WritealetterthisXmas

It has been a while since I wrote a letter to somebody. But for years I exchanged them with friends until, with the advent of email, writing letters became more of a rarity with longer and longer periods in between. I never took a decision to stop writing letters, but it happened all the same. And emails never replaced the joy of opening the postbox and finding a handwritten letter with your name on it, physical evidence that you had been somebody's undivided center of attention.

Recently we had to empty some shelves at home and I found a couple boxes full with old letters. A huge bunch of colourful envelopes of all sorts and sizes from a magnificent variety of people, including friends, siblings, parents and cousins. And spanning many years from as early as 1990, which is when I first went to England on my own until pretty much a couple of years ago. Just imagine the joy of rereading what was sent to me twenty or twenty five years ago! Rediscovering things that had long been forgotten. Savouring the choice of papers, admiring the myriad stamps and, at times, struggling to decipher the one or the other word or sentence. Did this or that joke have a second meaning at the time?

Many letters from special senders were nicely and meticulously packed by year. Others, mostly Christmas cards ans postcards, were just piled ones of top of others waiting to be sorted. For years. That is, until last week.

It is literally impossible to find such a treasure and leave it aside without opening the one or the other envelope. And once you start, it gets addictive! While rereading a couple of letters of somebody that I met 19 years ago, I was made aware that her birthday was just less than a week away. Normally these days this would have been a case for a hastily taken photo and a quick email message. But then, fortunately, I paused a few seconds to think. Would it not be best to return some of the joy I had just had? So I sat down in the kitchen and wrote a fully fledged letter. Two A4's pages. Double sided. Which, with my small handwriting, means a fair amount of catching up and, I'm pretty sure of this, an unexpected surprise for her.

So this got me thinking, would it not be great if this year I send letters to some dear friends besides the electronic greetings? Even better, would it not be fantastic if I convince others to follow suit and send letters as well? Not just to me, but to whoever they want to. This would spread the joy to many others. These days of social networks many things get viral, so why not this? Well, if you ask me, definitely worth trying...

And then I had yet another idea, what would my friends feel if I pick up one of their letters from twenty years ago and I send them along with mine? I know I would certainly like to receive copies of old letters of mine, and if anybody ever kept them and happens to be reading this, by all means, please go ahead!. I never kept a diary so this would be the closest to it, reading the thoughts of the younger me (or lack thereof!).

Right, the challenge is out, the hashtag is there, spread the message to your loved ones and, above everything else, #WritealetterthisXmas.

#EscribeunacartaenNavidad

Hace mucho desde la última vez que escribí una carta. Pero durante muchos años estuve intercambiándolas con mis amigas hasta que, con la llegada del correo electrónico, escribir cartas se fue convirtiendo en algo más raro y cada vez más espaciado en el tiempo. Y sobra decir que los mensajes electrónicos nunca llegaron a reemplazar completamente la alegría de abrir el buzón y encontrar una carta con tu nombre escrito a mano, evidencia más que palpable de que alguien había estado pensando en ti unos días atrás.

Hace poco hemos tenido que vaciar unas estanterías en casa, y he encontrado unas cuantas cajas llenas de cartas antiguas. Un maravilloso conjunto de sobres de todas las formas, tamaños y colores, llegados desde y a muy diversas partes del mundo por mis hermanos, mis padres, algunas primas y muchas buenas amigas. Las cartas más antiguas se remontan a 1990, que es cuando fui a Inglaterra por primera vez, y van hasta hace un par de años. Imagínate el placer de releer cartas que me mandaron los que yo más quería hace veinte o veinticinco años. Volver a recordar cosas ya olvidadas, saboreando el tacto del papel, impresionado por la variedad de sellos y, a veces también, intentando descifrar la letra del que me escribía. O intentando adivinar los dobles sentidos de algunas frases y bromas sin sentido evidente hoy en día.

Las cartas de algunos remitentes especiales estaban primorosamente empaquetadas, un paquetito para cada año. Otras, sobre todo tarjetas de cumpleaños y de navidad, estaban amontonadas esperando a ser ordenadas. Esperando durante años, justo hasta la semana pasada.

Es impensable (e imposible) encontrar un tesoro semejante y dejarlo a un lado sin abrir algún que otro sobre. Y una vez que empiezas a leer, no hay forma de parar. ¡Es una adicción! Al leer algunas de las cartas de alguien a quien conocí hace 19 años en Moscú me di cuenta de que su cumpleaños era dentro de unos pocos días. Lo más fácil hoy habría sido mandar un mensaje electrónico, quizás con alguna foto actual. Pero por suerte me paré a pensar un momento. ¿No sería mucho mejor compartir el placer que acababa de disfrutar? Dicho y hecho, me senté en la cocina y empecé a escribir igual que antaño. Un rato después había completado dos folios por las dos caras, lo cual da para bastante teniendo en cuenta el tamaño minúsculo de mi letra. Estoy seguro de que habrá disfrutado con la sorpresa unos días más tarde.

Pensando, pensando, ¿por qué no hacer lo mismo con otra gente y mandarles este año una carta en vez de una felicitación electrónica? O mejor incluso, ¿convencer a otros para que se unan en esta loca petición para volver a escribir cartas? Las cartas no tienen que estar dirigidas a mí, claro, sino a quien cada uno desee, y cuantos más se unan, mejor. En estos tiempos de redes sociales y videos virales, por qué no hacer viral un reto para escribir una carta y alegrarle a alguien el día. Por lo que a mí respecta, merece la pena intentarlo.

La siguiente idea es más increíble si cabe, ¿por qué no introducir una carta antigua de las de hace veinte años en el sobre en el que mando mi carta? A mí encantaría recibir tales cartas (si alguien que lee esto tiene alguna carta mía de entonces, ¡adelante!) Nunca tuve un diario, así que posiblemente esto sea lo más parecido que pueda tener para recordar los detalles de lo que andaba por mi mente entonces (¡suponiendo que hubiera algo en mi mente entonces!).

En fin, el reto está lanzado, el hashtag está ahí, así que sólo queda compartirlo y, por encima de todo, #EscribeunacartaenNavidad

#WritealetterthisXmas

Desarrollo en un plano

Cuando estaba acabando la carrera, daba clases particulares por la noche a un chico que era calderero. Recuerdo que una vez mientras le explicaba como hacer desarrollos, me dijo, sí, pero cómo hago esto en el taller? En el papel es fácil, pero estas cosas miden mucho más en la realidad. Y que razón tenía...

MIT - Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel

First stop at MIT, battling the wind and the snow (not a good day for outdoor photography). This reminded me of my time as an intern in the aerodynamics lab in my college a long time ago, working with other fellow students to determine the drag polar of a model aircraft. I have very fond memories of that time.

Taking a break in the Alps

I don´t know who brought this bench to this place. But it was just the right spot And facing the right direction.

Interflug 2012

The 2012 edition of the Interflug Hat Tournament took place on the hottest weekend in Germany this year. I happened to have some spare time and came round on Sunday to take some photos and enjoy the atmosphere, which brought me loads of nice memories, as I used to train in these sport grounds when I first arrived to Berlin. Last time I was here to watch the tournament was four years ago. From the photographic perspective, not really the usual photos I take, but precisely because of this, a nice challenge. To keep up with the sport theme, and since I was not playing, I pedaled the nine kilometers from home carrying the camera, the monopod and the 75-300mm (which I very rarely use). Good for the legs and good for the soul.

Just before the final game started the polish girl pictured above asked me if I was part of the organization and if I could take some shots of her during the game. The answer was no, I am not part of the tournament organization but I can definitely take some pictures. I learned that this actually helps to keep focused on something during the game, which made it more interesting and, not surprisingly, the photos came better than in the other games, in which I was shooting randomly waiting for the great layout (which this time I didn´t catch).

And since she actually liked the photos and was kind enough to provide some feedback to my e-mail, I will post a snippet here: "And I have to tell you, that the photos are awesome! :) "

A Canon lo que es de Canon (cuento de navidad)

A principios de diciembre me había comprometido a hacer un vídeo en el colegio de mi hija. Para hacerlo pensaba usar nuestra cámara, una Canon MV630i con siete años de vida, que en el mundo de la electrónica es una eternidad. El caso es que después de decir que sí que haría el vídeo, vi que la cámara no funcionaba. Se podían ver las cintas, pero no grababa. 

Después de preguntar en el curro me di cuenta de:

 a) la poquita gente que hoy en día tiene cámara de vídeo,

 b) lo difícil que se estaba poniendo el asunto.

Más por casualidad que por otra cosa, y bastante a la desesperada, llegué a la página oficial de Canon donde encontré un artículo que se refería a defectos similares en ciertos modelos. Para mi sorpresa, Canon todavía repara las cámaras al entender que es un defecto de fabricación. Y lo que es mejor, lo hace gratis como parte de la garantía del aparato. LLevé la cámara y, efectivamente, me la devolvieron a los diez días con el sensor reparado y sin pagar un duro.

Un poco por los pelos, pero todo salió bien. El día que vaya a comprar otra cámara, seguro que me acuerdo de esto.

La única pega es que si no la hubieran reparado ésta, junto con la navidades, habría sido la excusa perfecta para jubilar mi 400D...

12 meses

Some time ago I read somewhere that as people grow older, years seem to pass quicker and quicker. Apparently this is so because repetitions are not felt as something new (even if they are not so in the day-to-day detail), so we pay less attention to years where nothing new has happened. This may be so, or not. Maybe I am not old enough for that yet, or maybe this was an odd year.

Looking back at the last 12 months I was actually surprised at how much travelling I have done to unusual places (for me at least), although I have always considered myself not much of a traveller. Even so, I managed to clock 24 flights to 14 airports in 6 different countries. Some flights were bought months in advance. Others were bought the night before. I spent 7 weeks away from home on business travel, and about the same amount away on holidays with my family. I drove cars in both sides of the road in places where I could understand the road signs and took taxis in those cities where I could not read a word. I rushed for flights from a hundred miles away and sat in airports for hours waiting for my flight. Most importantly, I enjoyed my time all along and always tried to find time to take a couple of photos to capture some of the moments I lived so that they could be shared with my family and friends. Some photos were shown in the blog, which went through ups and downs in terms of quantity and quality. Some were shown in my first exhibition, which was well received by friends here in Berlin and, finally, most were kept for my family or simply myself.

And on top of this, there was the excitement and the joy of seeing how our two children grow and start to reach for the world...

En casa de Schiller

Relevo de pósters

De cuando en cuando cambio los pósters del pasillo. Ahora que me ha dado por hacer fotos, todos son de fotos mías, excepto uno. Hasta ahora.

Ese uno era un recuerdo de mis tiempos de becario "Rafael Calvo Rodés" en el INTA. Ahora todo el mundo está acostumbrado al Google Earth, pero esto era a principios de 1998. Por cierto que esto no tenía nada que ver con mi proyecto, que era un intérprete para poder pasar la geometría desde CADDS a KIVA, un código de simulación de motores de combustión interna.

El reemplazo luce ya en el pasillo y esta tarde cuando he ido a recogerlo de la tienda, el hombre que estaba esperando detrás ha echado un vistazo y ha dicho "Cool!"...

From time to time I change the photos in the corridor at home. They are photos that I took myself, mostly family photos, except one. That is, till now.

This is from my times as a student. I got a much sought-after "Rafael Calvo Rodés" scholarhip at INTA. By the way, this had nothing to do with my project at the time, which was programming a code to translate CADDS geometry files so that they could be used by KIVA, an internal combustion engine simulation code, but it´s been with me ever after. And I´m talking 1998, long before everyone was used to satellite imagery with the likes of Google Earth.

The photo which is taking its place was shot this weekend and when I went to pick up the poster to the shop, the guy behind in the queue could not help exclaiming "Cool!", which is kind of nice.

GewandhausKinderchor

Este fin de semana pasado tuvo lugar en el Gewandhaus zu Leipzig el concierto en memoria de Ekkehard Schreiber. Los antiguos componentes del coro (entre ellos mi mujer) también salieron a cantar, aunque algunos hacía casi veinte años que no pisaban el escenario. Y por supuesto lo hicieron genial.

This past weekend we went to Leipzig to attend the memorial concert for Ekkehard Schreiber. Old members of the GewandhausKinderchor (including my wife) were also invited to participate, even if for many was the first time on stage for the last twenty years. No need to say they performed great.