opera in the park

Yesterday at about 6 in the evening we caught a bus to Temple Newsam in Leeds. It is beautiful estate house about 20 minutes away from Leeds and has a magnificent garden around it. I have been there once before with Juan-Carlos and Hike for a nice little bike ride and it was good to get away from the madness of the city itself.

But yesterday was not about that. In the gardens there were more than 50,000 people with picnic baskets, tons of food, wine, beer in the lovely sunshine waiting for an Opera. Yes, it was an Opera in the park. It was my very first one, and I absolutely loved it. Just the ambience itself was also fantastic, but even better was the music. We had a good bunch of people chilling there having a good time and enjoying what is called the British summer. It was nice to see people from all walks of life getting together.. there was an entire range right from aristocrats to chavs.. a complete mix.

Needless to say that we got back pretty late at night and continued the good times back in Leeds.

Janis Joplin

I woke up this morning after a good night's sleep and was feeling very hyper as I always do. I decided to have some decent breakfast, which consisted of some sweet yogurt, apple bran flakes, melon and milk. The sun was shining bright outside and I put on some Janis Joplin to make the morning even better.
It has been a good day so far, when you listen to Janis in the morning you just know that it is going to be a good day. Her voice is just fantastic, it is even intoxicating. It is the kind of singing which makes you become aware of everything around you, it makes you feel alive. I wish I could have seen her perform live, unfortunately I was born too late. Her music definitely lives on.

hello world

Hi everyone,

I know it has been a long time again and I do apologise for keeping in the shadows lately. I have been really busy with work over here and sharing my life wouldn't have been very exciting for you lot. But just to let you know that I am alive, I decided to write a short blog.

The past few months have been absolutely crazy. Travelling to Canada where the temperature was -30 and then off to Borneo, where it reached +30. Surprising my body did not revolt, even though I abused it a lot with some frost bites and such. It has been a crazy journey over the last few months and when I have time I will write about this in detail.

After Borneo I was in Leeds for some time before taking a short trip back to Canada to see the girlfriend. That as you can imagine was very exciting and I came back all rejuvenated. Since then I have been sitting around and writing the papers from ourprevious campaigns and of course the great Thesis. I decided to write the thesis in Latex, which is a fantastic program once you get to know it. I remember having arguments with Roisin about how bad latex was, and I was completely wrong about it. I love the software. But it is not very easy and to learn it I had to go through the 'hello world' programming yet again in my life. But things are starting to move along well and I will keep you updated on how things are coming along with it from now on.

The other things I came across, was from madu's shared items on google... check this link.. 'India Uncut.. WTF'. I think this is a very well compiled list and gives a very good idea of how things are going on in India. Since I am at the end of my education (finally!) I am starting to read about the political situation in India a little more. All I can say for now is that I don't think I will ever get a chance to be bored there.

Take care you lot.. speak soon!