From Carlos: “[anything] sucks, but it doesn’t have to!”
Windsor Castle
On Saturday I spent the entire day walking around the town of Windsor, one of the places to go and visit the Queen. According to the flag that was flying on top of the round tower, we were also lucky enough that the Queen was in, though we didn’t get a chance to see her.
Windsor castle is stunning and its entry price reasonable considering you get an audio tour and walking tour included. The gardens are stunningly kept and guards decked out in big tall black hats bright red uniforms tromp continuously throughout the grounds. The castle has a very long history, once a wooden fortress strategically placed atop a very big hill, now built up significantly into a series of stone buildings and churches. I found it fascinating to see all of the historical artefacts related to generations of knights, kings and queens all throughout the visit.
Being quite warm and summery we decided to take a slow boat cruise around the Thames where we saw the Windsor racecourse, one of two island racecourses and the only one with its own marina in England. It was a great day and many other people thought the same, as indicated by the large number of boats moored to the side of the river (and sometimes to each other). Plenty of people were picnicking, swimming or just sunning themselves excessively red raw. We finished off the day by visiting Eton college a brief walk away, most famous as the preferred institute of education for the Royal family. Check out more pictures in the gallery.
The Rakes @ Islington Academy
The last two weeks finally caught up with me midweek, and though I managed to recover from it with a record twelve or so hours sleep in, I think I’m still in recovery mode. Due to this, Tuesday was my last night out this week where I spent it watching The Rakes perform at the Islington Academy. They are yet another awesome British rock band – part punk, part indie and part alternative. Their lyrics are simple, entertaining and extremely catchy. Definitely check out their latest album Capture Release if you can, or better yet, see them live if you can find any tickets to their ever-popular gigs.
I had never been to the Islington Academy before, and I was quite impressed as it was a good sized venue (not too large) and had air-conditioning to boot! Admittedly the venue was probably not as full as it could have been, but I was thankful it wasn’t on our particular night. The Rakes definitely filled the venue that night and put on a performance that pleased the crowd, and the best part about the night was that it was free because it had been sponsored by Converse – bargain!
Lior at the Spitz
One of the great things about London is that sometimes good things from back home come over to visit, such as Lior. Last night was the third time that I’d seen this Sydney-based song writer and artist, and it was great to see that his popularity reaches across the globe (okay, well with many other Aussies who happen to be living across the other side of the world). The event was held at The Spitz, one of the smallest venues I’ve been to so far, but was a great atmosphere easily filled with 200-300 of his fans as well as new listeners of his amazing vocals and music.
He started with his two most popular songs, Autumn Flow and Daniel and interweaved a number of newer songs with a number of his very popular songs from his album. Lior enjoys interacting with the crowd, and last night was no exception with a number of close tales and jokes shared along the way. I think everyone was very impressed by his performance, all amazingly acoustic and stunned by the vocal range he achieves when he performs. He even tried to get the crowd involved with his Superficial song but I think failed to evaluate the (lack of) talent in the crowd – after all, we are there to listen to him. He finished the night off with his hauntingly stunning song, Grey Ocean and finished off with a Hebrew prayer.
TheKua.com Rating: 8 out of 10
A Weekend in Oporto
Despite a late start to the weekend, I still managed to arrive in Oporto at a decent enough time to bask in the warm sun. Admittedly it wasn’t as warm as I was expecting, with a weekend temperature of just below 20 degrees for most of the weekend, but at least there was no rain and quite a bit of sunshine.
Oporto is a Portuguese coastal town located north of the better known city of Lisbon. It is the home of Port wine, a sweeter variety of wine fortified with brandy and you can find a number of its makers on the southern bank of the river that splits Oporto. Portuguese wine is very good quality and I was lucky enough to catch them celebrating it on their river. Numerous stalls lined the banks of both sides of the river, giving samplings of red, white and rose wines as well crackers with sardines, bread and even chorizo at one of them. It only cost a single euro for a tasting glass and unlimited quantities of good quality wines.
The river is an essential part of Oporto life, with many of the buildings and streets towering around it. Numerous bridges separate the two banks giving easy access to most of the land, but the city centre and the two shores are easy enough to walk around if you are willing to tackle some hefty hills. There are plenty of churches around and it’s just amazing looking at the old buildings, some brightly coloured reds, whites and yellows as well as how a number of houses had been tiled on the outside, something you really don’t see on modern houses these days. Many of the houses hang Portuguese and even the odd Brazilian one showing how proud they are of their country.
Oporto has a good number of buses along the north bank of the river and there is even an old rickety tram to take you along the shore. There aren’t any ferry services across the river but you can take a river cruise for almost an hour at €10. I really liked the friendliness of the Portuguese people even though many did not speak English very well (or at all) but one thing that bugged me was the amount of smoking that went on, especially in restaurants and even in the middle of shopping centres as they walked around.
Fish plays a major part of the classic diet, and the Oporto speciality is a tripe dish that I did not give a go over real Portuguese BBQ chicken to which Nando’s does not quite match. Coffee is just as popular everywhere there, with the espresso apparently the standard one to have with one of the many Portuguese sweet breads or tarts.
Though a shorter visit than I expected, Oporto has much to offer and was a very enjoyable though exhausting weekend. More pictures can be seen here.
Not Much Luck in Travelling
This weekend I was going to be in Portugal but I missed my flight last night thanks to the not so Heathrow Express. What was supposed to be 15 minute journey ended up as just under an hour long one and meant I missed my check in by a few minutes. Thankfully I’ve been able to reschedule a flight for lunchtime today, but it does mean my weekend break is even shorter. Oh well, looks like it pays to leave buffering when you depend on three types of public transport to get to the airport.
Oulu, Finland
Oulu Finland is a very nice Finnish town, and the largest one in Northern Finland. It is closer to the Artic Circle than Helsinki, and at this time of year, has the Midnight Sun (effectively 24 hour sunlight). Admittedly it’s not extremely bright all day long, but it certainly never gets dark and the sunset lasts a very long time. The hotel has three layers of curtains so you can attempt to get some sleep.
Oulu has amazing bikeways that allow people to cycle or rollerblade any part of town. Our hotel for the conference was located by the river and main market square, a central hub of this city. Locals and tourists alike hang around the number of restaurants, pubs, stalls in this square soaking up the warm sunshine and the lively atmosphere. Amazingly the weather was stunning for all of the conference, and it only got mildly chilly at “night time” when a cool breeze was blowing.
The coast of Finland is also not too far away, and there is even a sand beach and beach resort at which you can kite-surf at. It’s certainly not a beach that has waves but the water was mild enough to take a bit of a swim in.
Finnish people are very friendly and helpful, even though some of them do not speak much English. Most of the ones I talked to spoke English very well. Long hair and beards are popular with men and the many heavy metal t-shirts worn by the youth really make you understand why Lordi represented Finland in this year’s Eurovision. At the conference we even had a unique opportunity to listen to, what I imagine as, the only shouting choir in the world. They actually make an amazing vocal group and their intensity is obvious from the vocals and the faces they make during their performance.
I had a fantastic time in Finland, both at the conference, and during what little free time I had to look around the city. The lush green fields and fresh country air also made quite the change from working in the middle of London. You can see more pictures from Oulu here.
XP2006 Day 3 Short Summary
Final day. More highlights include:
- Entertaining keynote with Kent Beck talking about what is more Extreme than XP, and leading on to the discussion about the Responsible Developer. Like XP, his talk focused more on the developer role in an organisation but talked about what comes next.
- A fun two-part workshop with Rachel Davies and David Hussman talking about Agile Project Parameters where we brainstormed and dicussed the questions we might ask as an agile coach during a Project Chartering session.