21 de desembre 2007

Japanese Toilets

Im back! im back at the blog and sitll at Narita, but I wanted to let you know that I went to the toilet!

I know, people go to the toilet, its an act that we do everyday. But not everybody goes to a japanese toilet everyday, and that is the special part about it. How could I have forgoten about japanese sophisticated toilets?!?! I went there and suddenly the lid of the toilet started to open on its own! Wow! i sat down and the seat was heated ....niceeee! not to hot not to warm...i didnt have to freeze my but as I was shitting. Later the thing flushed it self automatic but there was a button in case I wanted to give more power to the flushing water. The lid closed automatically as well. Oh man I had forgoten that this past summer when Miquel would say he was going to the toilet we would not expect him back for the next 5 minutes, and i guess that went for any memeber of the family...all the available buttons in japanese toilets can make you go insane. I mean, i ended up just now making a video and god knows how many pictures of the toilet itself. And i think it really has nothing to do with my father selling toilets...nah, it definately has nothing to do with that! Its already pitch dark, now theres only 2 more hours of wait! 2 american airlines and 1 eastern china airplane have parked infront of me....soon ill be in my Qantas flight, which I hope will be better than BA. BA doesnt give you a little "toiletry bag" and the food isnt as good as qantas...Qantas at least gives u a menu and a snack bag in the middle. In fact qantas was listed in the "top airlines" voted recently in i forget which website (sorry!)...

Hmmmm im still wondering How could I have forgoten about japanese toilets and their warm seats? Ill upload the japanese toilet video once im home! Looking forwards to remeeting my aussie friend outside, she must be exhausted!

-- Also, I knew i was in japan when I passed the duty free area and all you could hear was " irashaimasennnnn, irashiamasennnnnn" whahahahaha. And of course they asked me in japanese something and i looked at her like " HUH" and she said "where are you flying to" "oh, sorry.. Sydney"..."ahhh so desne..Sydoney"... yes Sidoni for japanese!
So see you all at sidoni in 12 hours!

Update from Tokyo

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am back into the blog! And its Holidays! :) So now im updating from Narita Airport in Tokyo. Im here on a 9 hour transit stop from London. I should be home soon( the 9 hour wait plus the 10 hour flight) though as from here I fly directly to Sydney. I have to say im very exhausted.

7.30am alarm clock rings -why is it ringing?im on holidays. Oh yeah, im flying home today.
7.45am francesca calls - im taking the bus to the station, ill see u in the train station.
8.00am miquel calls - 15 minutes and we are leaving okay?
8.15 am we put warm water on the ice that there is on the glass of the carr
8.18 am amazing sunrise! if only i had my camera (tsk its in the rear seats)
8.22 am leave campus
8.30 amarrive at station and get mine and miquels luggage while he parcs
8.34am Monika and Francesca are already there, i buy the tickets
8.45am train comes and leaves....
8.53am we arrive at Massy Palasseau, time to change trains...
9.00am we are at Antony..bye bye to Francesca and to Miquel who almost miss their stop.
9.30am I randomly meet Marlene in the train
9.39am Monika gets off - Bonnes Vacances
9.40am Marlene realizes she is going the wrong drietion and jumps off
9.45am the train just stops and i start to get nervous
9.50 am the train is still stoped
9.55 am the train is running
10.00 am the train stops again
10.15am we still have 10 train stops to go
10.30am "ladies and gentlemen, the train will skip all the stops in the middle and go directly to the airport" yessssssss!
10.40am arrival at airport!
11.00am finally do autocheck in, change seats and head to business lounge
11.10am the business lounge has no working computers! GRRRR!!!
11.30am Start to get calls non stop: Miquel,Alexandra,Dad (good flight good flight) and then good news, we set an interview for when ill be back with a company :)
12.00am Time to board the plane
12.05am Before bording i have to pass another security and ppl start to cut line...how beautiful.
12.10am I wait sitted for everybody to board. What is the point in making a 10 hour queue if afterall you will all be in the plane!? I love to sit and watch ppl board the plane and make lines, once everybody has gone in then i stand up and board the plane...
12.25am We depart
12.50am (london time) we arrive at heathrow.
Im so thinking about other things that I go from terminal 4 to terminal 1 for my next flight. But because im distracted i take another bus back to terminal 4 and then i realize im back where I was and have to take another bus back to terminal 1. I have to pass controls in every terminal, so I end up rushing to the plane and board on time. The two hours I had of transfer have ended up in me running in circles in Heathrow. I can finally definatively state that I know the airport terminal 1 and 4 pretty well :)
14.25 am Depart of flight. And the adventure begins.
I turn to my right and there is an older woman sitting. Just to make some chat i say "we have a long flight infront of us", to my astonishment she replies that she is going to Sydney. Aha, so im not alone! They took her off her direct flight from London to Sydney so now she is also coming to Tokyo and having to wait 8 hours... She talks to me about her life. Super active 73 year old who wakes upa t 5 everymorning to go running and then swimming. To the other side i have the aisle and then there is a pretty tall guy. Once we have started to fly the guy tries to pull his sit back but the bitch behind him puts her knee to prevent him moving. He gets irritated and kindly asks her to take her knee out. Her reply is nothing more than "if you want more space you should get yourself a business ticket". The guy seriously has no words, i look at him with a look that lets him know i think the woman is a super bitch and i feel sorry for him. "Madame look at me, im big, look at yourself. Please let me put my sit back"...she continues to be arrogant as she has also previously been to the cabin crew when they told her to sit down and she replied " you leave with a delay and then you tell me to sit down? i think we can do whatever we want if we are laeving late...". Everytime that i stand up to drink water and walk around the airplane in this 10 hour flight my 73 year old australian neighour joins me. And she starts to have chats with everybody, so suddenly we meet many more ppl who are also going to Sydney via Tokyo. Funny! The woman is the one who is initiating all the chats. Specially by going up to everybody and going "good day mate".

"im portuguese but i live in sydney"
"im spanish but i live in paris and my famlily lives in sydney"
"im french but i live in london and im going to visit someone in sydney"
"im australian but i came to brusels to see my brother and im going back to sydney"

The point is we are all going to Sydney...and we all hope to get there in about 34 hours...
Everybody is sleeping, even the tall guy who doesnt fit in his chair, but of course I cant. I watch a movie, i look at a bbc documentary on india, i listen to music, i even put an audio book as im convince that will make me sleep, but nothing works. Finally I wake up, i have slept! Yes, for 1 hour only.Out of the 10 hours i only sleep 1 and it is the final hour when the lights are almost open.
The old woman who was super active starts to feel sick, we disimark and i say "bye see you in the later flight"... i head to the business lounge at Narita. The place is nice,but it lacks food, however im having this free internet. It also has showers and since ive never taken a shower in a business lounge and im swety and tierd i decide to go for it. Wow! The shower place is huge, i feel like in a hotel. Wow Wow Wow...this at least compensates for the lack of food. People are sleeping in the lounge, but its pretty empty. Theres about 4 of us who are here since 11 and who are waiting for the 8pm flight to Sydney. The people that I met in the plane im sure they are all outside sitting and hanging around. I take some pictures with my nikon, i walk around but nothing is new and im tiered. I still got 1,000yen left from last summer which i spend on somethign to take home and which I hope the australian customs wont keep....

And I forgot to mention, BA said the "welcome to tokyo" message in Japanese,English,Spanish and CATALAN! Why catalan, i dont know! When we left london they said it in Japanese, English and French, but in landing they said it in Catalan and now the best is that it wasnt a tape, it was really someone speaking :)

Im waiting to get home...soooooon! and now im going to try and sleep (im purposely drinking some rum and coke..see if that helps, im jetlaged and tiered!)
Goodbye from Narita!
I wish i could have walked around Tokyo, it would have been nice. But Narita is far from Tokyo and I didnt want to get lost in the city. So before having any problems I rather just stia nd wait here together with all my friends that came from London!
See ya later mates!

08 de desembre 2007

Picture of the Day

The attraction of death. This takes place in India and everyyear various drivers and watchers die.


L’attraction de la mort, en vrai : ce cylindre de bois aux lattes branlantes attire chaque année de très nombreux spectateurs au carnaval de Jammu, en Inde. Deux voitures et deux motos y tournent perpendiculairement au sol, grâce à la force centrifuge. Mais cette performance est encore plus dangereuse qu’elle en a l’air. Plusieurs jeunes pilotes y perdent chaque année la vie, de même que certains spectateurs : la balustrade est en effet impuissante à les protéger d’une éventuelle éjection des véhicules.

Have a look at more pictures Today's Recommendation
http://www.lefigaro.fr/lefigaromagazine/2007/12/07/01006-20071207DIAWWW00474-arret-sur-image.php
Im drained!! I woke up and headed to breakfast, followed by a walk to the train station. Finally the pompidou museum to see some modern art. Modern art can sometimes be entretaining, afterall its up to you the interpretation that you make out of it. However, today it wasnt that great. Im wondering if it was cuz i was starving and I could only think about food or cuz the stuff was just awkward. In fact im not sure Alex or Carlos loved it that much either :) The best part was an exposition there was on architecture, that was worth it, but by then I was so starving I could only sit in the pink sofa....We then started walking under the rain, and met Miquel for lunch at Quartier Latin. Hmmmm...mexican! We had our hopes up, we believed the rain would stop...but that obviously never happend. We walked again and got even more drained until the train station (not even that far). Finally frozen,with super wet feet and in the middle of the darkness (it was past 5pm) I arrived in my room....and I still hear the rain outside. Too lazy to study right now, will do that after dinner,tommorrow and the day after :)

In the attitude of doing a countdown to get downunder --> summer!!! And yet unfortuantely everybody is counting to go home and back to their lives...but afterall I have no place to go back. I can go and remeet some friends in Spain and start a new life on my own in my house, and move around Barcelona with my map. Tell my cousin to move in :). I can start a life in France, move somewhere...Who knows! For now just maintaining all doors open and trying to figure out what I will do on the 9th of February. Cuz where in earth am I meant to go back to?!?!

----keeps raining, this seems to be the tradition of saturdays. However, nothing has been as bad as NL, not as cold, not as windy, not as rainy. Missing patat and stroopwaffels.

Today's Recommendation http://amis95.blogspot.com She has won prizes and been on the radio, she is the oldest blogger on earth. When she turned 95 her stingy grandson got her a blog as a present. Her life memories and comments can be found in this site :) Get to know the oldest blogger and her life!

07 de desembre 2007

Last post 2nd of December! Its been a small while! So to compensate and because yesturday was St.Nicholas I hve decided I will recommend you a link for every day that I havent been here.

First of all the coolest one. Probably some of you already knew it, but I had no clue this existed. Today's Recommendation 1 www.igoogle.com Basically you can costumize your google page. Put as many gadgets as you want, put a theme that changes with the wether of the country/place you are at. So here is how mine is looking up to now.
For the days that you are in need to escape, to take a backpack and Get Lost you can watch the video's that lonley planet TV offers. So today's recommenation 2 http://www.lonelyplanet.tv/Clip.aspx?key=7F517EB535E42270 there are 7 different parts. Two backpackers found they had a video function in their camera and did a short home made movie of their travels through Asia, see Laos,Cambodia,India through 7 short videoclips.

Are you Zap or are you Zen? Let me introduce you to the IdTGV. We had a presentation from them the other day in class. Its a TGV which takes you from Paris to the south of france, and in april they are opening their new line to Lyon. About 1 of these trains operate per day,sometimes even two. You got two ambiances teh Zen which is a 100%silence or the Zap where you can rent dvds, play music, discuss and it has an entire differente ambiance. So travel get to know ppl and form part of the online communitiy with ID TGV's which is today's recommenation 3 http://www.idtgv.com/165i.html

And if you want to keep traveling and discuss travel questions then why not just go to the lonley planet thorntree and ask anybody your questions. Or answer those that you need. I love this place...its a great area to get comments by experts on your area of travel. So today's recommendation 4 is http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/index.jspa

And one of my discoveries of this week will be today'srecommendation 5 http://www.slideshare.net/ I still havent explored it too much but this is meant to be the world's largest community for sharing presentations on the web, and as they like to reiterate it's free!!


So tommorrow Im heading to Paris to do some iceskating,cultural visit and have some good fun :D And then dive again into work work and preparation of my two coming up interviews! With the night arriving, people leaving the campus and me having just recieved a nice phone call I now leave you to explore the world wide web .... Have a good weekend!Bon Weekend!Bon cap de setmana!Buen Fin de Semana!

02 de desembre 2007


....Repetició del meu Fotolog al meu Blog..... Perque avui vull somiar :)

Me voy...

Que penso fer?? Doncs ho tinc molt clar.
1.) Acabar la carrera
2.) Fer practiques
3.) Fer la tesina
4.) Buscar una feina i dir a la empresa que si realment em volen que s esperin 1 any que jo vaig a fer la meva volta al mon d 1 any....


Recordeu quan vem seure en aquelles amakes a discutir les nostres voltes al mon? Doncs jo ho tinc molt clar, no puc estar sempre al mateix lloc i penso pirar....Bhutan, Nepal,Birmania,Illa de pascua, desert de atacama, gambia,uganda,kenya,egipte,turkia,iran,qatar,oman

A veure amics o a coneixen de nous...penso pirar...perquè jo estic feta per caminar i no per seure en una cadira amb un ordinador. Així doncs escolteu be perquè en un futur llunya podríeu rebre noticies meves de noves destinacions i nova vida, nous viatges....
La vida solo se vive una vez i jo ho tinc molt clar, jo no soc de poble. Dídac confio amb la teva participació a part del meu viatge (per ara tot son somnis...) Però si he lo grat tot el que volia fins ara, per que no això??!? Encara que nomes siguin 6 mesos. Mindrot amb tu confio que m acompanyaras a la part de europa del est.

......sueña, es lo unico que te mantendra vivo.

CDG life or death?!

Its finally sunday night. And I say finally cuz i finally have some time for myself, to do what I want. Most of the weekend has been consumed by working on assignments, cleaning cloths, working at the university restaurant and sleeping till "late" (9am). So what do I really want to do now that I have "free" time? You should know by now... I was just googleing a webpage which I havent seen in a while and which will be

today's recomendation http://www.sleepinginairports.net

This is quite a handy website. In case you have a very early flight and thus you dont want to pay 40 euros or more for your taxi. In my case I have been told that there is a risk of french greve (strike) on the day that I will leave Paris, so I thought I would have a look at this site. I already knew this site from before but I hadnt visited it in a long time. It gives you people's opinion on airports and sleeping in them. How secure it is etc...

The truth is that I haven't been in Paris CDG since god knows when. However, remembering past times I remember it being an old,desorganized,chaotic,ugly airport. Basically,one of those airports where you just dont want to be at. Talking to fellow travelers only reinforced my ideas. I went to this website with the hope of finding some revealing information. With the hope that CDG would be placed as an excelent place to sleep before embarking on a 24 hour flight...However, the results where quite unshocking and depressing...

What you can look forward to in Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport:
  • bucket seats with armrests
  • cold metal benches
  • no seats at some boarding gates
  • hot and humid
  • washrooms smell
  • staff are rude and unplesaant
  • frequent announcements
  • filthy washrooms
  • noisy
  • homeless people
  • frequent announcements
  • a few couches in transit area
  • WiFi
So basically, there is WiFi but I dont have a laptop with me to be able to take advantage of the only good thing the airport has. My dream would be that a friend would drive me there, that a sweet gentelman from BA would come and pick me up at the car. They would take care of my luggage and leave me at the business lounge. When I would board my plane they would offer me an upgrading to business class, and when I would do my transfer in Heathrow I wouldn't have to do all the Quees to get to Terminal 4. Later in embarking the B747 (cuz im hoping it will be one..) I dream that I would be able to have a chat with the pilots who would show me their cabin like when I was a kid. I would ofcourse get an upgrade to first class cuz nobody flies in xmas and planes are empty. Lastly, in Tokyo I would meet the CPO of JAL who would offer me an internship position. After more than 24 hours I would reach home - Sydney. A boat would take me to the opera house. From there there would be a red carpet to my appartment.

Back to Earth, Lets hope there isnt a strike.

Bisous.