Sleepy Suffolk

Euston station, a few minutes shy of eight o’clock. The station bustling concourse is slowly quietening as rush hour City workers have already made their way home. Still, passengers conglomerate here and there in groupuscules of 2 or 3 echoing the ‘cinema seat’ theory. The cinema seat was a metaphor used by my 10th grade Physics teacher to teach his daft students how atoms’ electrons would settle around its nucleus. Firstly individually, then in pairs…
I’m on my way to one of the Northermost cities of the United Kindgom. Only hours ago, I could gaze out the fifth floor of my office building and just about make out Port of Felixstowe’s cranes swarming down on newly arrived cargo ships. Now, as I look up from the Britannia, a typical train station pub perched high up on the second floor of the station, I can glance across the station hallway and watch travellers make their way to their trains. Outside, the grisly January day has made way for a pitch black night.
I am off to Inverness to be a judge on a children’s IT competition (see here). The train - the Caledonian Sleeper - is one of the perks of the trip. It is possibly the longest and lengthiest passenger train in the United Kindgom. Leaving London Euston shortly after nine PM, it reaches the outskirts of Inverness well after 8AM and trawls its way through England and the Highlands in no less than eleven-odd hours. A bit of googling has taught me the way is scenic. Well not sure how scenic it will be on a January the 26th by night. I sure won’t be spotting any black bear on a black background at midnight. Inverness will be my last trip of the month, but rest assured, more is to come.
In the meantime, I sip a half-pint of Chiswick, a local English ale, in a reference to a small ‘village’ in Western London where Laurine lived for the better part of 2008. It is relaxing to not have to run about, change trains, jump on a tube, struggle past turnstiles. Speaking of which, Euston’s toilet facilities (washrooms if you please) are heavily guarded by a long row of mastodonic turnstiles kindly inviting the traveller to deposit 30p into a slot before being granted access to toilets - far from being the cleanest of all England. But it won’t dispute the title of worst toilet in Scotland branded in Irvine Welsh’s ‘Trainspotting’. Thank God for my sudden nature urge, I did have 30p on me in change and managed to dash through the turnstile to deposit the contents of my discontent bowels.
It is now eight sharp. Vincent, a fellow Frenchman friend & Londoner is about to join me for a pint, an au revoir before I embark on a journey that may well see me face to face with Britain’s favorite monster, Nessie.
Until then, I bid you farewell.

Barely a fortnight into the new year, and here I was jetting off again to some far-away overseas land. This is the fantastic thing about England: pretty much everything, save Wales and Scotland, is over a murky body of sea conveying excitement and mystery to any trip no matter how close, business-like, and uninteresting it may be. Yes, an escapade to a remote Walloon town can suddenly sound like a trek to an unchartered land all thanks to the Channel.
This time though, I was off to Madrid to visit my father who’d been dwelling in the eastern parts of the Spanish capital for the past 8 months or so. My mother still being in France, I decided I’d pay ‘my old man’ a visit and show him a good old time in Madrid’s many joints, bars, and restaurants.
Much like most travel from Eastern England these days, it all started with a Ryanair flight from Stansted Airport on route to Madrid’s 4-strip airport. And suddenly the excitement and thrills of overseas travel had been dwindled down to a bland necessity to fly on board Europe’s cheapest - in all senses of the vocable - airline. But to complain would be like shooting oneself in the foot. We, consumers, have brought Ryanair unto ourselves by begging for ever cheaper fares and complying with the airline’s whimsical regulations in order to achieve such ridiculous prices. And to be quite honest, if the wary traveller fully plays along (i.e. doesn’t bring luggage along other than a small carry-on bag; checks in online; lets other passengers fight for vital space in the long queue reminiscent of long-gone post-war rationning eras; take it easy and not care about flight delay), then the airline delivers perfectly.
I was surprised to note there were a few fellow Frenchmen flying out to Spain: in the queue, I eavesdropped on a very interesting conversation between two 20-odd French passengers ignorant that others may well understand their language. At least, time flew by for me as I listened to their banter. Once inside the aircraft, I grabbed a seat in the very last row and was shortly joined by a pretty girl and a male friend of hers. They too chatted away like there is no tomorrow. The girl seemed fidgety. She was merely nervous to be flying and surely soon enough she snapped at me in French thinking I wouldn’t understand. All this because I had my HTC contraption turned on (in flight mode of course). I replied that (a) I’d understood her every last word, thank you very much and that (b) my phone was turned off. It’s a shame we hit it off that way because apart from her nervousness, she seemed like a very nice girl in all proportions indeed.
The reason I’d left my smartphone turned on (in flight phone I stress again) was to be able to trace the plane’s route using a GPS receiver I’d recently bought. I had cached Google Map images of the route in my phone before the flight and so, I was able to plot my route and follow the progression of the flight as it went up north of Stansted and Stevenage to then circle round London, past Reading, Heathrow, then finally south to Southampton, the Channel, Britanny, and at least some 200km well off the French coast (past Nantes, La Rochelle, and Bordeaux) into Spanish mainland over Santander, close to Burgos, Segovia, and lastly Madrid.
Once the Ryanair bird (I mean by that the plane, not any of those calendar pin-up girls) touched down at Barajas, I hastily made my way to the underground and some 40 minutes later, both my Dad and I were enjoying a famous fizzy Dutch beverage in the apartment kitchen while chewing on some delicious local chorizo y morcilla (de Burgos por supuesto). We caught up on family chit chat and gossip which was thin indeed. That’s the problem with permanent ubiquitous communication means. Family members update each other in near-real time nowadays which means that by the time you get to see family facef-to-face, everyone already knows everything and there is little point in rambling on about Auntie Emma’s latest amorous conquest (no I don’t have such an aunt).
The hour being well into the night by French standards, we called it a night and went off to sleep to doze off.

Disclaimer

The IT-minded readers of this blog will tend to wonder how Brad Chen relates to a seemingly odd word ‘roscón’ while the not so IT-geared Spaniards will ponder who in the world Brad is and what his relationship to one of Spain’s national cakes is.

A grand day out

On this glorious and sunny day of mid-January, I headed out to London to attend a security talk at UCL given by Brad himself on Native Client, a Google project focusing on secure clientside execution of native code. The talk took place at UCL’s Bloomsbury campus a couple streets behind the timeless British Museum. Rain drove us quickly into the building’s lobby and a few other attendees and I waited for the amphitheatre to empty itself of the previous lecture’s students before settling in.
Soon enough Brad came along, gave us a presentation as well as a convincing demo of Native Client before taking questions from the audience. The main concern that arose was whether Native Client was indeed novel (by comparison to previous attempts e.g. Java applets, CGIs, ActiveX) and how security was handled. If one is to execute native x86 code on their own personal PC, they had better trust the source of the code.
More at UCL Event Details and Google Native Client

La galette des rois

On the way out, I strolled over to Holborn and - feeling in a rather merry mood - went to Paul, a French bakery chain, to enquire about a French galette des rois. Traditionally France, Spain, and other countries celebrate the Three Wise Men with a specially crafted cake called Roscón de Reyes in Spanish or Galette des Rois in French. The celebration takes place on the day of the Epiphany, January 6th. But very often, the celebration (or at least the cake-devouring part) stretches on until the later days of January. And so, Paul still had quite a few roscones to be had and I acquired one thinking of my housemates’ delight at eating this French delicacy. This was by no means an easy mission as Paul Holborn redirected me to Paul Covent Garden claiming it was the only (yes the one and only, the unique, the marvellous) store in all of London to still sell the French galette.

This no galette, this is a Bask cake

This outrageous statement came straight from my beloved Navarrica housemate, Amaia, who scornfully but gladly mouthed in a piece of galette. So this was no proper roscón, merely a pale French version of a local Spanish cake. Shocking indeed! Napoléon would have performed a whopping somersault had he not succumbed to arsenic a few years before. With National pride in jeopardy, it was time to turn to the books to set the records straight: who of the Spanish or the French had invented the cake? And which was the authentic one? Had the integrity of the roscón been breached? A quick read-through of Wikipedia, the ever-increasingly authoritative source of Truth, taught us a few things: firstly the tradition is not linked to the Wise Men (so much for my earlier comment); and secondly France has different cakes depending on the region and the southern French cake seeped into Spain before the time of Felipe V (so much for the Pyrenees as an impenetrable border). The French Rooster could now stand tall and persnickety having dispelled the Iberians’ intrusion in French culinary matters.

Let’s go to IKEA

By now, one may wonder how IKEA fits into this story of IT security and Spanish cakes. One of the reasons for gathering round the cake at our house was to prepare our upcoming trip to Schruns for a skiing holiday. Still can’t quite see the link? The Swedish furniture-in-a-kit company, source of Nordic swagger, and Amaia’s favorite pasttime, irrupted into the conversation when Maria, our beloved Andalusian midwife sprang into the room not unlike a Jack-in-a-box and declared «vamo’ a IKEA».

Or so we, the non-Spanish speakers, thought. What she had in fact said, in her delicious Linareh accent, was none other than «Vamos a esquiar» which translates to «let’s go ski». Our puzzled looks generated an uproar of laughter from the trans-Pyreneans. Maria then clarified what she’d actually said and we moved on to talk of our future adventures in snowy Austria while nibbling on the last few crumbs of the galette.

Wednesday, who doesn’t love a Wednesday? It’s halfways through the week, there’s only two days left before crazy Friday (thank god it’s only Friday that’s crazy) and you’re comfortably settled in your work routine. Ah the bliss of the Wednesdays.
And that’s not even half of the story. On Wednesdays, my best buds from right around the corner come round in a big mighty truck (they’d call it a lorry or possibly a van) and drop off a box of swell vegetables (the very same ones where Amaia’s sweet swedes came from). And on that day, when I hurry home from work, it feels a bit like Christmas all over again: I’m in eager expectation of the box. I open the garden back door, peep in, and - now it feels more like Easter egg hunting - I peruse the garden with by box-seeking eyes until wham I locate it, tucked away in the corner between the living room door and the cloakroom window (if one can call a glassed 10cm wide gap a window).
The expedition takes on a rescue mission twist as I lift the box and sundry up and rush them to the kitchen. You see, although one can check the contents of the box online, I never bother doing that. I’d much rather have the surprise. As a matter of fact, even when I order known extras (like butter, meat, etc…) by the time the motherlode’s delivered, I’ve forgotten what I’d asked for. And so the surprise is truly genuine.
Today was no exception. If anything today, the surprise effect reached its climax. Firstly, it’s mighty cold outside and the sole feeling of going inside a warm home is titillating indeed. Secondly my roommies are still very much away and being home alone in the kitchen, even inert vegetables are a true solace. Thirdly, the Christmas effect hasn’t worn off and this is the very first, one and only, box of 2009. There won’t be another box #1, will there now?
Today, my order came with a second refrigerated box (to be specific a styrene box with packs of ice). Now that’s kind of amusing as the weather has been so inclement on the Fahrenheit scale that it’s probably colder in the garden (and for that matter the downstairs cloakroom - again) than in the styrene box. In other words, why bother?

They say this period of the year is made for resolutions, for instance, to eat more healthily after such hearty Christmas meals crowned by the inevitable brandy-sloshed pudding. It seems Abel and Cole have heard Mum’s advice loud and clear for as I unfolded the box, out came carrots, turnips, parsnips, and the odd potatoes; that accounts for half the box’s veggie population. The other half teemed with clementines, bananas, and the usual suspect, the apple. This and regular squash sessions with matador José should put me back in shape in no time.
And so, the remainder of my Wednesday evening was spent cajoling my box, tucking the vegetables away in their respective shelves, and planning what to cook for the rest of the week.
Until next time, bon appétit!