50 years of space

4th October 1957 will be regarded forever as the start of the space age. Add 50 years to that date, and yes! it is today! That day the Soviets managed to launch the Sputnik 1 satellite and make it work in orbit. It was the beginning of the dream: satellites for telecom, navigation, Earth observation came later. A few years later, the focus turned to humans in Space: Gagarin, Tereshkova, Apollo 11... The first man in space was Gagarin on 12th April 1961, but that is to be celebrated in a few years from now... And to complete the list of space age milestones, I shouldn't forget all those probes, rovers and missions to our sister planets in the Solar System!

Check this link out for further information about the Sputnik program.



As expected, NASA and ESA have echoed this 50th anniversary in their websites, and created some sort of special covering the info. Surprisingly, JAXA hasn't... maybe it has to do with the great amount of news from the Selene mission and the lunar orbit injection maneuvre today! Almost everyday there is something going on out there!! If you don't believe it check out this amazing picture of the Earth. It was taken by Selene a few days ago and is the first HDTV picture of the Earth from so far away!

One year in the Netherlands

1st October 2006 was the first time I set foot on the Netherlands. 2nd Oct was my first day at ESTEC. It is already one year since I arrived!! Once again, it is unbelievable to see how fast time passes by...

In this year, I have met many people and done quite a lot of interesting stuff at work... and discovered the bad points of ESTEC: you become friends with someone and they have to live in a few months... being more than one year here means saying farewell to so many people...

Anyway, I think my stay here has been satisfactory so far. I expect the next year, and the last in my contract, will be at least as good as this one.

The worst aspect of being here? ... being far from Naochan, of course...

Desera

Hace unos años encontre en ManerasDeVivir.com un disco "copyleft" de una banda llamada Desera. Con el tiempo me encontre con otras canciones de la banda, como "El Punkarra" o "Que dificil es seguir"... La primera es de las favoritas de mi hermano ;-)

El otro dia me alegro ver que esta genial banda valenciana ha publicado su primer disco "Matices". Lo he escuchado y suena de puta madre. Han incluido las canciones anteriores, de su maqueta en copyleft, y esa es la unica pega que le pongo... Las canciones viejas sonaban genial de la forma anterior. Al regrabarlas para el disco nuevo han incluido variaciones que en mi opinion han hecho cambiar el sonido mas autentico de las originales... Bueno, que me rayo... Nada, que son un pedazo de grupo y ojala que tengan suerte y este sea el primer disco de muchos!!

Disfrutad de su primer video!

Miniaturas de Warhammer

These days at home made me come accross many memories... it is amazing how fresh, and at the same time far, objects evoking memories look like... However far you run away and try not to look back on your past, memories will always end up finding you. It is not you look for them or come accross them, they finding you instead...

When I was at school, I used to play RPG such as HeroQuest. After some years, my friends turned to hardcore role games such as WarHammer or The Call of Tchulu and I decided to quit, as I didn't find them attractive. However, I kept the hobby of painting small miniatures from these kind of games. I found in my bedroom, two of them which I really liked: a dwarf and an elf. They have been painted for so many years... but they still look cool... I feel happy I could create something like that so many years ago (around 15 years ago now...)

My 25th birthday

My youth starts coming to an end ;-) and maybe my 25th birthday was the beginning of the end... hehe

Well, the only real thing is last Sunday 23rd September was my 25th birthday and I was in Almansa, my hometown, willing to celebrate it with my family and friends! Saturday night was spent with my friends downtown and on Sunday, I stayed in my countriside house with my grandparents, parents and brothers.

Saturday night started with a visit to our official Chinese restaurant, that restaurant to which we had gone so many times during High School and University...



After enjoying the marvelous taste of chinese food, we moved to another of our official places ;-) Beltran's grandmother's house. There we talked and drank some sangria to start the night in a happy mood!



Later, after 3 am, we moved to the pubs, to La Cabaña and El Codigo, to enjoy rock and punk music of all kinds. It wasn't hard to convince my friends... we are getting older and these places start being attractive for people of our age... hehe



As it is typical in Spain, we came back home early next morning... after a great night with all-time friends!

Next morning, I took my car and went to my countriside house were we watched MotoGP races and prepared for lunch with my family. My grandmother prepared Gachamiga, a traditional dish which doesn't look very nice but tastes superbly!! Thanx yaya!!



Of course, there was a cake and the typical candle-blowing and photos with my brothers and family!





And presents!!



Actually, it was extremely nice to come back home for such an occassion!

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!!

Utrecht

After the visit to Brugge on Saturday, we were a bit tired and decided to take it easy on Sunday. Therefore, we watched Formula 1 and after lunch we made for Utrecht, just around 50 minutes away from Leiden.

I had never been there, so I wanted to go as well. From Utrecht, I only knew some peace treaties had been signed there and that this city is the city of Miffy, the rabbit-character designed by Dick Bruna.

Just after our arrival we could notice Miffy's influence. Have a look at the top of this building.



After that, we went walking around, just sightseeing. There were a couple of nice buildings and the highest tower with bell in the Netherlands! Of course, as any Dutch city, there were canals everywhere... Have a look at the pictures. ;-)









And after the walk downtown, we took a rest at a tapas restaurant down in the main canal. It was so relaxed and pleasant! A nice experience!





PS: Tomorrow I will come back to Spain for my birthday (23rd Sept!). Therefore, I won't write here at least until the weekend! Ciao Ciao

Brugge

My brother and his girlfriend, Rocio, have been in the Netherlands since last Friday (that's the reason why I am not updating the blog often this week). Last Saturday, we went to Belgium, to Brugge (Brujas in Spanish).

This city is quite famous and known as the Northern Venezia. Actually, Brugge in Flemish means Bridges. Therefore, you can figure out what the city looks like: canals plus bridges plus old pintoresque houses. Add all that together and you have Brugge. As my friend Jorge said it looks like an open-air museum.

As I feel a bit lazy and don't know the names of the places, have a look at the pictures to get to know the city.















Apparently, local ladies used to do bobbin lace (encaje de bolillos... in spanish ;-)
That tradition is now another tourists' attraction.



We had to travel more than 3 hours by train to get there and the same to come back but it was well worth it!! I am sure we will never forget our visit to Brugge!!

The Aggrolites

Last Thursday, I went to Amsterdam to a live house which I start to go to quite often: Melkweg. Well, the Aggrolites were playing and I decided to go and see them. I was going alone but finally Jorge Alves joined me.

The evening was really nice! The show started at around 9 o'clock and
continued for one hour and a half with once break in the middle. It was really good quality reggae and the band tried to involve the audience in the music. The result, a lot of fun! Have a look at some photos I took of the band.





And this is me and Jorge.



The member of the band came to the pitch and we could talk to them for a while. This was the bass guitarist with us.



And this is a sample of their music:



See ya in the pitch!

Japanese Caligraphy

My boss at the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Takata-san, invited me to his house for a whole weekend last summer. There he exposed me to real Japanese culture: Japanese caligraphy, go and of course, food(temakisushi, takoyaki, okonomiyaki...)!

Caligraphy was the thing I enjoyed most! It was really nice! Takata-san's daughter, , taught me how to do it! She had won some high-school awards in caligraphy, so she was an excellent teacher!! This is me struggling with the paintbrush to try to get something decent out of the experience!



And this is my teacher writing SAKURA (cherry tree).The final result is amazing!!

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Finally, the following photo shows the result of a whole morning of practice!



You can notice easily which are mine and which are my teacher's! Anyway, it was an unforgetable experience!!