The snow and ice are fully gone and cycling season is on. Already close to 100km done in the past couple of weeks and I’m one happy camper (I mean, happy biker).
I could almost swear my body is adjusting to the exercise ;-).
All posts by chivacongelado
A world without airplanes
As many have experienced this past week, I don’t think that it would be as rosy as Mr. Alain de Botton remarks. Our world is humongously interconnected as you can see in the TED talk below (from TEDx Volcano, an impromptu event created by speakers stranded in London due to the recent contingency).
Severing links, however temporarily, is extremely painful in both personal and economic terms. You can ask the 7 million stranded passengers for their opinions if you think otherwise. Many of them have been using social media tools to somehow cope with the situation, as Teemu Arina explains.
The past few days have looked quite a bit like a teaser of what a world without oil would be. Hopefully it serves as a wake-up call to us all.
Riga
We were lucky enough to have spent a couple of days of the Easter weekend in Riga, capital of Latvia. The city has a great collection of Jugendstil (German Art Noveau) buildings from the 1930’s and it was very nice to walk in its cobbled streets, even if the weather was not much better than Finland. It was very interesting to see how much investment has come from the Nordic countries, with a large amount of Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian companies present in the country and a partly-renovated airport that looks decidedly similar to those of Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm & Helsinki with its use of wood, glass and iron.
The country has a long history of foreign occupations from Germany, Sweden and Russia, so a visit to its museums is definitely recommended to get some background information on the way the country came to be what it is. Furthermore, it currently tries to recover from the after-effects of the global financial crisis, when it’s economy pretty much collapsed. Not surprisingly, travelling here is relatively cheap, but due to inflation consumer prices are almost at Scandinavian levels.
The break was very welcome indeed and I’m happy to have crossed out the last of the Baltic countries I was missing.
Career advice for freshmen
Every once in a while I get asked by friends (or friends of friends) if I have any advice to give to young people about to start university. Some points below:
- Be honest with yourself in deciding what you want to study. If you don’t like it, don’t sacrifice 4-5 years on it.
- Even then, understand what is the labour market like for your chosen field.
- A diploma might be a requirement, but extra-curricular activities, other skills or even social connections migth very well be what opens the door for when you get a job.
- Keep a good relationship with your teachers if you can. If you earn their trust, they might help you later on in your career.
- Be aware that as corny as it might sound we do live in a globalised economy. Your competitors (and your partners ) might not be in/from the same city, country or continent as you.
- With that in mind, evaluate whether you need to have a good understanding of languages, cultures and physical challenges (such as timezones). Studying abroad (as an exchange or full degree student) will give you first-hand experience in all those things, but if you do not have the chance, try to engage with the exchange students at your university and sign in to foreign-language courses.
- Understand that globalisation doesn’t mean Americanization. While the US is still very important, so are Europe, China, India, Latin America, Africa…
- Regarding your career choice, be assured that in many cases it won’t last forever. Market and workplace conditions change really fast. According to some studies, the average graduate will have 5 different careers before he retires. I can tell you I have already had 3 very distinct phases in my working life (from engineering to sales to marketing) and I’m not yet 30. Furthermore, my current professional field didn’t even exist 7 years ago when I finished my bachelors degree.
- As such, the most important ability you will graduate with is that to unlearn and relearn. Never lose that flexibility.
- Be open, be brave, try new things (even if they’re not related to each other or your current field). You never know when that knowledge of space exploration, basketball or Latin American rock might help you (those are real examples from my career).
Any thoughts or additions?
Science poems in the Tube
Found in my most recent trip to London.
Tunas de 140 pesos el kilo
Mientras en México se preocupan por que no exportamos ni siquiera nopales y tunas que crecen de a gratis en el campo, me encontré los “higos de cactus” (como los llaman acá) arriba de 140 pesos por kilo como se ve en la foto.
¿Cuándo nos vamos a dar cuenta que hay más mercados que el estadounidense en este mundo para conquistar, y más productos que el petróleo y la maquila con los cuales hacer dinero?
The movie industry is killing itself with regionalisation
I love watching movies, especially at home. I have a Sony full-HD TV & home theatre system at home and am planning to get a compatible Blu-Ray player of the same brand at some point. My efforts to go HD with my movie collection have hit a snag, however: I don’t buy all my movies in Europe so I need multi-region players. Sony doesn’t seem to sell multi-region Blu-Ray players, only DVD players.
Why wouldn’t I get all my stuff here? Simple, they don’t sell many Mexican or Asian movies here, and for Disney movies especially I like Mexican dubbing, just as for anime I prefer Finnish dubbing instead. I don’t download movies nor buy pirated goods, so am especially annoyed by all the warnings in the movies I buy every time I play them.
Why would the movie industry punish me by treating me like a delinquent instead of a customer? Why can’t enjoy media I pay for? Don’t they understand I’m a paying customer asking for a product, if they would only provide it to me?
Belgian Beer Review: Westvleteren
This is a post in the Belgian beer review series.
Chocolate caramel colour. Bouquet of blueberry toffee. Creamy but not mushy head. Intial taste of bitter trappist, later becomes softer, gitst of saaristoleipä initially, then notes of blueberry, cream and honey. Awesome experience, great beer. No wonder it is regarded as the best beer in Belgium and probably the world.
Eläkeläiset vs Los Tigres del Norte
Recommended Book: Wake
Robert J. Sawyer, one of my favourite sci-fi authors (moderately famous now that his novel Flashforward has been adapted as a TV series of the same name) scored another coup with his latest novel. I won’t spoil it for you, but it touches upon how it is to live with blindness, Chinese censorship of the WWW and emerging consciousness. The good news is that it’s the first of a trilogy to be completed in the next couple of years, so I’ll be gladly waiting for more.