Barcelona

Checked out another Asian restaurant this Friday. The menu contains a selection of Korean, Thai and Malaysian dishes. I went for the lunch menu again, which was a Laksa Lemak soup as starter and a merluza with sweet sauce. The soup was nice, the merluza rather bland. The deserts were the usual yoghurt/flan/cake selection, so I went for a coffee. Because they are one of my favourite dishes I also ordered Thai spring rolls. These are served cold and show their ingredients through their translucent rice skin. Very nice and I will be back to see if the other a la carte dishes are as good. All together ~ 12 Euro for the lunch menu and 6 Euro for the rolls. You can find it at C/Valencia 454 or on-line: http://restaurantbatik.com/ ...

Onion Bhaji Last week I finally checked out Bembi. It is supposed to be one of the few good Indian restaurants in Barcelona. As with Chinese restaurants it seems to be very difficult to find a good one in the rather large selection of Indian restaurants. I went for the lunch menu, which probably doesn't represent the overall quality because it is rather cheap at about 14€. The restaurant itself is nicely decorated and non-smoking. For starters I had the a bit greasy Onion Bhaji, fried onion fritters with a sweet sauce. The mains was Chicken Assadh, a green curry style dish with a saffron flavoured rice. And for desert the Gulab Jamun, a very nice cinnamon flavoured ice with milk caramel. Overall the lunch was a good average experience and made me want to check out the taster menu, which is a bit more expensive but probably better quality. Bembi www.bembi-barcelona.com Consell de Cent 377 08009 Barcelona Chicken Assadh Gulab Jamun Menu del Dia

Once in the while I do something I haven't done for a while and get surprised by how much fun it is. Today I wanted to get the ITV (Spanish motorcycle inspection), which has been overdue for a while. I didn't do it because I haven't used it for a while and can't used it because I didn't have the ITV. Turns out that I needed an appointment, so I run some errands. I got a new zoo membership card and cancelled my old gym. This took me with the motorbike down and along the beach. The weather was beautiful and it was reasonable warm. I saw the beach, smelled the sea and felt the Barcelona air in my face. Whenever I use the motorcycle I get a smile on my face. I really should use it more often. And it makes me appreciate Barcelona more. Now - most people would say that it shouldn't come as a surprise that living in Barcelona, enjoying the sun and taking a beautiful bike for a spin along the beach is a nice thing. In fact it is probably a dream for most people - including me. Sometimes you have to take a step back and take a look at your life and realize that you pretty much got everything you need instead of chasing the next dream. You tend to forget that if you are stuck in your daily routine. By the way: the picture is from today, but not from the motorcycle trip but a mountain bike ride I did in the afternoon. And now I am going to make Thai green curry and hack some code. Nice!

by boite-en-valiseA new year means new resolutions. But first a quick look back at the ones from last year. On the fail side: I didn't loose weight, neither did I use my motorcycle more or took a lot more advantage of Barcelona. Success on: sorting out my music collection, travelling somewhere new, doing more programming and blogging a bit more. Now to the next year. I read a bit about these kind of resolutions and how to be better in succeeding. I probably took too much on in the last year and it is better to have some way of quantifying success or failure. So this year I am just taking on three resolutions. I still keep the failed ones from last year in the back of my mind though. 1. Loose weight (again), but this time with a plan. I will try to loose 0.5 kg a month. On the one hand it doesn't seem a lot on the other hand loosing 6 kg in a year seems too much. I will keep track of this and also keep track about my sport activities. To achieve the goal I will have to reduce my lunches with the opus5 guys and increase my sport activities. I will swap my gym for one nearer to my flat. I also will stop eating sweets and snacks. 2. Reduce time spend watching TV, reading e-mails, blogs, facebook and twitter. I will unsubscribe from as many services as possible. Instead I will spend the time programming, cooking, reading, socializing and doing sports. Not sure how I will put that in numbers, as I don't have them for the past, but I will make something up. 3. Do something about my so called "career". This could mean doing something more fun, working less and/or earning more money. Either at opus5, new projects in my free time or something completely new. I will have to see what comes up, but I have twelve months to decide.

Now that another decade comes to an end, it is time for me to see if the ten years really were worth the effort. Overall it seems to have been more pain than was strictly necessary. 2000 - it all started quite nice. I just turned 30 and was living in London, just got together with my girlfriend and working for guideguide a very nice start-up which was going quite well at the time. One highlight of the year was a trip to OSCON in California, where I witnessed the beginning of Perl6, which seemed brilliant at the time and now appears a bit pointless. 2001 - will always be remembered for 9/11, someone in the guideguide office heard about it over IRC and we quickly confirmed it on TV. It was also the year where I bought my first iPod, maybe the only trend I ever spotted early. Nobody at the time imagined how either 9/11 or the iPod would shape the future. 2002 - I split up from my girlfriend for a while and decided that this would be the right moment to start drinking alcohol again after ten years. 2003 - guideguide was scaling down a lot now and I had to fire lots of people, which was probably one of the most stressful episodes of my business life so far. 2004 - with not much left of the company I decided I could as well move to Barcelona and work from there. It turned out to be a lot of fun and a lot more relaxed than London. It was also the year where I got ill and fixed up again. 2005 - a bit of work, a bit of travel, a lot of recovery 2006 - I quit guideguide after lots of years. It was a difficult decision, but nobody of the old gang was still around, so I didn’t feel too bad. I was also looking for a local job and just being employed for a change. I used the rest of the year to chill and enjoy Barcelona. 2007 - Found a new job at opus5, learned lots of new stuff. For some reason the founder left after I just started, is it me ? 2008 - whatever happened to 2008? 2009 - I decided to stop drinking again, turned out to not be my thing after all. The economy made this year really interesting and I hope it will turn up some new opportunities in the future. Oh, and I turned 40 and I am looking forward to my mid-life-crisis, but that is the topic of another post. And finally thanks to everyone who made these years more fun then they sound: my girlfriend Cat, who makes everything more lovelymy family: Kathrin, Thomas, Klaus and Ulla, who helped me through some rubbish Mikel, who brought me to London the guideguide guys: Andy, Adam, Alex, Marc, Rob, Jasper, Ben, Luke, …, who made me learn a lot and fast The Londoners: Anita, Justin and Graham who made it more fun Opus5: Dennis & Pablo, where I learned a lot of stuff I didn’t wanted to knowSo lets see what the next decade brings, maybe a new start and the opportunity to do completely new mistakes! Here are some random pictures from the past ten years