Back to life for good!

Hey there!
Long time not seen! It has been more than two years since I wrote my last post. At that time, I was facing new life conditions in Japan and felt there was no time left for blogging. I am still too busy, but sometimes I feel I miss writing in this, my little window to the world.

I have changed the blog address for a change. Now, it is kita1010.blogspot.com. You will probably wonder what is that?! Well, that is the place where I live! Kitasenju, in Adachi-ku, Tokyo. Senju has the same reading in Japanese as the number 1010 and therefore, it is often shortened. Kita just means North. Adachi-ku is famous for being the most dangerous place in Tokyo, but believe me, this is way safer than any place in Europe or the USA! not kidding!

So from now on, I will continue writing in this blog from time to time. What will I talk about? Well, the usual stuff... but now, I will probably focus in my trips and life in Japan. There are so many cool things going on around here. And I have being in so many cool places in the last two years!
My current map of visited countries is this one:



So I have visited 61countries and I have not told you about it... I will try to be not so boring and will post many photos :)

Well, this is probably enough for starters. I hope this time I can really manage to post updates often! See you soon!

The end?

Wow, that was quite an effort; three long posts in a row, non-stop and with many photos! I hope you have enjoyed and I haven't bored you too much.

After more than 3 years and around 505 posts, my life has changed quite a lot. I have lived in 3 countries, visited many more (in one week I will get to 49 visited countries!) and tried to make the most of my time on Earth.

My life now is quite different. I am married, have an interesting and absorbing job and live in Japan again. When I created this blog, I intended it was a way of communicating with my friends and family. It has accomplished its purpose quite alright, but now I feel I do not have much time and I would like to use that little time to communicate with people more directly. I want to have time to reply to emails, have some phone conversations, etc.

Therefore, I have decided to stop writing in this blog for the time being. I do not know yet if it will be permanently or just for a while, until I figure out how to manage my time better. Anyway, thank you for reading this blog and leaving your comments! I hope you have enjoyed reading it!!

Best, Alvaro

PS: Use this post to leave your last comments!!

400 posts!!

That was post #400!! It took two years and several months to get there. But my blog made it among many other blogs which only lived for a couple months! And now it is back in good health: frequent posting and around 50 visits a day. Thank you to all of you who read me from time to time!! :)

400 POSTS!!

Picasa web

Hey, I just found out all the photos of this blog are archived in picasa web... google's photo website.

http://picasaweb.google.com/algongar

And here, my best photos, some of which are not in this blog:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/algongar/

I went through all of them and it is nice to see the contrasts of so many places put together... Seeing all these photos, I realized I have done quite a lot of travelling recently!!

I am kind of traveling sick! But, is there anything more interesting than traveling? Getting to know new places, beautiful cities, breathtaking natural scenery... As long as I have time, money and energy, I will continue travelling!!!

Btw: an update on my planned trips now:

14-17 Nov: Hawaii. I will visit Oahu, the island where Honolulu, Waikiki, etc are

26Nov-1Dec: Mexico. I will travel in Yucatan peninsula (Cancun, Merida, Mayan sites...) and then I will go one day and a half to Mexico DF (half day downtown and one day to the ruins in Teotihuacan)

From the end of final exams until 15th Dec: San Francisco

From 15th Dec to 4th January: Home for Christmas

From 18th to 23rd Dec: Malta

So, as you know, if you wanna join, just contact me and let's go for it!! My conditions are always the same: get ready to walk a lot, see a lot and forget about resting until you get home!

My best photos

I have finally opened a flickr account where I will post my best photos! I didn't want to open it for a long time, but Jorge's pressure has finally convinced me. :)

I will continue posting most of my photos here, but some of the best will go to that website:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/algongar/

There will be a permanent link to it in the colum on the right.

I just uploaded some cool shots. Have a look at them and comment whatever you want!
Do you have a Flickr account??

Post #200!!

Yes, it is right, this is the post number 200 since I started writing seriously in this blog. If you have noticed, the map with my visits in the last year has been reset. Fortunately, I took a snapshot not to lose that information! And here it is, this is the map with the visits in the first year of this blog:



Let's keep up with this pace ;-)

By the way, I leave this evening for London where I will be until next Tuesday. After that, I will go to my hometown, Almansa, until next Sunday. There I will enjoy "Moros y Cristianos". The reason is next week there are several national holidays in the Netherlands and I felt like coming back home! I will try to tell you how I am doing from time to time! See you around!

By the way, the ticket for Bad Religion is no longer available.

Happy Birthday!

Today this blog becomes 1 year old! In the last year I have tried to tell you what I have been doing: work, trips, hobbies, culture... I hope you have enjoyed reading as much as I have enjoyed writing. For the moment, I still feel like keeping on writing, so let's see if it can turn two years old next April!!



In this year, I have written 192 posts and I have received more than 8200 visits, which is more than what I expected!

The only complaint I have is you readers do not comment much!! If there were more comments, it could be more interesting and participative ;-)

So,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Post #100!!

This blog was born on 14th November 2006, but I consider 19th April 2007 as the official birth date for my blog. This was the first post: El tiempo vuela... Since that date, I have kept my promise consisting of updating it often and in only a few months, I have reached the number of 100 posts!! Nice!! I have covered my trips to Finland, US, ESOC in Germany, within the Netherlands, to Belgium... or even by bike!! And of course, my adventures in Japan and ISU!

I have commented on music, politics, hobbies and ellaborated philosophical thoughts...

After all these 100 posts I am happy I started it over again! Now it looks nice and there is people who I know check it quite regularly! The total number of visits is almost 5000 now with a peak of 234... Who is reading this blog regularly? Leave a comment now!

To end this "important" post, a video shot during my birthday party in Almansa with my friends. Thanks Ramon for the idea!!

Record de visitas del blog

Pues eso, que estamos de celebracion en el blog. Hoy se ha batido el record historico de visitas con nada mas y nada menos que 234 visitas y 201 visitantes en el dia de ayer. Cuando llegue de trabajar ayer, le eche un vistazo al contador a ver por curiosidad si la gente se animaba a leer despues de unos dias de muy baja actividad y sorpresa! llevaba mas de 150 visitas! Como suelo creer en la causa-efecto y no creo que la casualidad haya creado tal numero de visitas, alguien sabe la razon? Dejadme algun comentario! no os limiteis a echadle un vistazo al blog! Como habeis llegado hasta este pequenyo blog?

Por cierto, muchas gracias a todos!



Update: Ya hay solucion al misterio! El blog de Aitor salio en meneame.net y recibio mas de 6000 visitas! Algunas de ellas siguieron el link de su blog al mio y ya esta, misterio resuelto!

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Today we have something to celebrate in the blog. Yesterday, the historical visits record was beaten! It got 234 hits and more than 201 different visitors! When I came back from work, I checked the visits counter to see if people started coming back to the blog after some really low-activity days and surprise! I had gotten 150 hits!

Reason: My friend Aitor's blog got more than 6000 hits because he was referenced in meneame.net. I guess those 200 people arrived at my blog from there ;-)

夏休み

今から8月6日まで夏休みです！ スペインヘ行きます! 行ってきます！！

From now until 6th August I will be on summer vacations! I will go to Spain! See you!

Desde ahora hasta el 6 de Agosto estoy de vacaciones! Me voy a España! Hasta luego!

Je suis en vacances jusqu'au 6 Aout! Je rentre en Espagne! A plus!

Algongar turns mobile

"De Viaje por el Mundo" turns mobile this week! Tomorrow I will fly over the Atlantic Ocean for the first time in my life to set foot on my third continent: America. I will be there until 17th July and visit New York, Chicago and Washington with Naoko. I think it is gonna be perfect!! I will try to post some photographs when I have some free time and provided we have internet in the hotel.

Talking about turning mobile, I saw the PDA version on my blog in Jorge's PDA this morning at ESTEC. Nice! It is accessible from everywhere ;-) Have fun and see you soon!

Nacimiento de mi blog

Pues aprovecho estas líneas para saludar a todo el mundo al que hace tiempo que no veo, que son muchos y para invitar a todos a leer lo que se me ocurra escribir. Esto nace con la idea de contar lo que hago por ahí y evitar que todo el mundo me pregunte donde paro ahora.

These lines are a good opportunity to say hi to everybody I hasn't met in a long time, who are quite a lot of people, and to invite you guys to go through these lines I will be updating from time to time. This is conceived as a way of telling you what the heck I am doing out there and to avoid people asking once and again where I am hanging around at the moment.

No dudéis en dar vuestra opinión y en contar cosas vuestras para que todos estemos informados!

Don't doubt offering your opinion and posting your news so we all can get informed!