Does it snow in Lisbon?

Very rarerly, but today it did and I wasn't there! Everyone is taking photos, talking about the big snow fall (nevão) and celebrating this unusual event. It seems that the last time it snowed in Lisbon was on February 2nd, 1954. 52 years ago! I want to commemorate with the weather.com screen that will confirm, to future generations that this in fact really took place. I'm sure we'll not see the frozen drops falling in Lisbon for many years, except if man continues to screw up the ozone.

Do you touch without feeling?

The average human looks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, moves without physical awareness, inhales without awareness of odor, and talks without thinking.

Leonardo da Vinci
Architect, musician, anatomist, inventor, engineer, sculptor, geometer, and painter
1452-1519

How about a very special cup of coffee?

After reading this you'll think twice if a friend asks you to taste his just bought gourmet coffee.

On the island of Sumatra, a small animal eats the coffee fruits and the seeds (beans) pass through its digestive system and are excreted. The beans are collected from the jungle and processed as normal coffee. The taste is supposedly much richer than typical coffee. You read correctly. This small creature, which has the scientific name of Paradoxurus hermaphroditus, loves coffee fruits, but its digestive system cannot handle them, so they are expelled together with the rests of his previous meals. While the coffee beans are rolling inside the Paradoxurus they go through a natural fermentation process that gives them an "earthy flavor with a musty tone that is heavy bodied".
Like the common house cat, the civet habitually tends to empty its bowels in the same spot every day. The island natives already knowing were to find the little creature's feces, run their fingers though them to find the little hidden treasures, which are then whashed (thank God!), shipped, packaged, sticked with a heavy price tag (in Milano they sell for €450/Kg), bought, ground, prepared, savoured, and expelled bak to nature.

The real thing is called 'Kopi Luwak'. Be attentive for knock offs, you may never know what creature's digestive system the coffee bean has gone through.

Would you like to have this in front of you?

Taken during the usual A1 traffic blocks between Bologna and Firenze. I would not expect a normal looking van like that would transport DANGEROUS GOODS. I'm not sure what it contained, but I made sure I didn't had to find out.

How about invading some train tracks?

I'm tired of strikes! I can't stand them any longer!

Two days ago I had a meeting in Roma, so I decided to take the train because it's a much more comfortable way to travel. I can move, eat, read, get lost in my thought and not run the danger of being smashed by some truck that decided to cruise the highway at 170Km/h. I was just arriving to the train station when I start hearing strange noises - horns and people shouting. I turn to towards the source of the noise and I see a crazy sea of people wavering red flags.

When they arrive to the station they go directly to the lines and settle there in the middle of tracks, where in just 5 minutes my Rome heading train was going to arrive!! I couldn't believe my luck. The information board suddenly came alive with the delay updates - the smallest delay was of 40 minutes. My Roma bound train showed a 1h delay. If the track invasion had not convinced me that my trip was going nowhere, that board did it. I went to the ticket office to look for a reimbursement. As I was in the ticket office line the delay times in the board had a life of their own. In a couple of minutes my train's delay was already in 1H20m.

After getting my money back, I decided to find out what was going on. I went outside and the hell was loose there. Hundreds of people with red flags filled the tracks.

They were protesting against the lack of agreement regarding the new labor contract of the metal workers (Metalmeccanici). It seems that they wanted a €100 euro monthly raise and the industry said that wouldn't raise that high. So they decided to go out and make the life all the other Italians a hell by cutting highway and train tracks.

I'm ok with strikes to be used in certain situations and people fighting for their rights. But I'm not ok at all, with people lacking respect to others. Imagine that someone had to go to Roma to a urgent doctor appoitment due to a life threatening diseasee? Is all those people their raise increases more important than one single persons health situation? I don't think so.

They could be creative and do other forms of protest, like for example invading RAI and stopping all those crappy TV shows. I would even join them!

(All photos are from the Il Resto del Carlino newspaper)

Why would you want to stretch your mind?

"Man's mind strectched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions"

Oliver Wendell Holmes
American author and physician
1809-1894

Wy aim glade thei sepeake englisch?

I've found this amusing sign 0n Barcelona's Hostel Lucense. Aim glade thei speake ande note rite!

Why do people spend money to save money?

It's quite common to see people spending money with the objective of saving money. Unfortunately most of the times they end up spending the double of what they wanted to save. Usually the cycle repeats itself for several interactions until the person, or organization, has a cash flow problem or decides that it suffered enough and stops the bleeding.

Typically the thing goes like this: let's invest €75K which will enable us to save €25K a year for the next five years. This would have a five year ROI of 67%, which seems reasonably good. Problems usually happen due to three factors. First, the estimated costs and savings assumptions were wrong. Second, no proper cost and risk analysis was done. Third, poor project management planning and implementing the initiative. In this example the company can easily end up discovering that the real costs were €120K and that the saving turned out to be €20K, the five year ROI suddenly became -17%. They would done better to keep that money in a order account and gain the standard interest of 0.00000012%.

There's also another reason why many of these budget burning projects happen, no analysis at all was made. Someone just got enthusiastic about something and the organization failed to have controls in place to detect, stop or correct projects that are slippering or that should have been stopped before starting.

Would you want this license plate?

Look to the license plate I've found in a car parked under a bridge in the center of Budapest. Does this person speak English or did he/she choose on purpose?

What's so special about Moskva Ter?

Moskva Ter is an amazing subway station in Hungary. I experienced it for the first time in 1996 while doing an InterRail and for 9 years I recurrently thought about it.

In 2005 I had the chance to return to Budapest and the first thing I did was to go back to the Moskva Ter subway station ready to pay more attention to it.

The special fact about this station is how deep the station is and the huge and slow escalator that takes you to the surface. The station is 38 meters deep and it takes 1 minutes and 44 seconds to arrive to the top. The effect is stronger if you see it for the first time from the bottom. If someone faints during the time the escalator is carrying them it's certain death. No one can survive a fall of that kind. Exciting!

Why are people, that are supposed to be helpful and friendly, rude?

Last Friday I had enough of rude people. I had a problem with the ADSL connection so I called my provider Libero for some needed assistance. I got to hear the latest Shakira's hit appropriately called 'Tortura' for 40 minutes. When finally someone decided I had suffered enough, I got a feminine voice on the other side asking 'What do you want?'. I was amazed by the way she answered the phone... I asked if I was interrupting her dinner. This exchange started our conversation on the right foot. From then on it just got worse.
I believe that Luisa had a very developed technique in how to 'unserve' customers. First, she makes you feel guilty about calling and then she makes you feel the dumbest person on earth for having the problem you need help to solve.

I'm tired of bad customer service! This episode was the culmination of a string of experiences to forget. I have decided to fight this war and to give honest feedback, in a educated way and with the help of irony to all customer service representatives that don't know the meaning of the word friendly or helpful.