Miel de Maple

I’m an engineering student because I believe engineering is the crisscrossing between design and science, and maybe because, when as a child, I assembled too much LEGO bricks.

Just a few weeks ago I discovered a box in my closet with all the building blocks of my childhood. My  allergic rhinitis keeps a Kleenex box in my room that looks hideous, so one morning I decided to look for the intersection between Kleenex and LEGO bricks. It resulted in a fancy LEGO Kleenex Box!

Highly recommended!

Now everybody is worried about being ‘eco-friendy’, ‘organic’, ’sustainable’ or, at least, ’energy efficient ‘. “Organic cotton fabrics” in jeans  and coffee packaged in recycled paper remind me two things: that Earth might be threatening our survival after a few hundred years of thoughtless living and more importantly, that ‘green-friendly’ stuff can produce broader margins of added value.

You can be ‘hip’ and green by drinking Starbuck’s coffee, driving an hybrid car or applying yourself all-organic and natural make-up which is expensive. But you can still be green without spending and help improve the quality of life of a bunch of people that doesn’t exist yet.

These are 4 small things I’ve done:

• Use public transportation instead of driving: use the extra time to read, think or meet your life’s love.
• Turn off  lights or electronic devices you are not using. Even better if you unplug them!
• Print on both sides of paper. Extra points for printing two pages per sheet.
• Plant a tree or take care of a plant. Besides, a plant in your house can add a nice touch to it.

Anyway, do whatever you feel to. With us or without, Earth is still gonna spin for a while.

It was the calm Sunday night of a thrilling weekend when my best friend said: we can have italian or we can meet these place called Ihop, US-like stuff.

I was really hungry so I told him: ‘Ihop’. Also the best answer to the question: where you should have dinner in order to feel a bothersome fullness, uncomfortable  enought to keep you awake until 4am?

We had a giant hamburger and enough fries and Coca-Cola to supply the daily caloric intake of four sailors.

I didn’t mind until bedtime when I started  feeling  a half-soul / half-physical discomfort.  I then remembered Thomas Hobbes saying:

“…cold doth in the same manner generate fear in those that sleep, and causeth them to dream of ghosts, and to have phantasms of horror and danger.”

My advice? Believe English philosophers  and your parents when they say you will have a  ’disturbed repose’ if you eat tons of food before bedtime.

Not so long ago, in a moment of distress, someone told me: ‘Don’t Give Up’. Like in so many movies, songs or self-improvement books, but it didn’t sound like bullshit then. I cooked for her one afternoon, because those words were helpful and because I sometimes forgot about them.

The phrase doesn’t look like  such a big deal, but this Friday remembered me it can make a difference. After all, success is more about hard work than sole virtuosity and more about taking action rather than just thinking.

Don’t let a big or long challenge knock you out. Never disqualify yourself. Don’t expect you will fail.

You can eat an elephant, one bite at a time. So Debug, Re-Execute and Never Give Up.

I’ll stop now before this start sounding too much like self-help literature and I feel nauseated.

We were 5 or 6 six years old when my best friend, Manuel, had a liking for Froot Loops with Sprite. I mean he poured Sprite in a glass and then, poured Froot Loops into that same glass.

He used to enjoy his snack every time we watched TV or played Nintendo, and everyone believed it was repulsive (as indeed it was).

Now imagine for a moment it didn’t result in something nauseating. Human history is full of serendipitous mixes and happenings that resulted in first-class dishes, scientific breakthroughs or at least, merry stories.

Take mexican “Mole Poblano” for example, an homogenous paste-like composition of chocolate, chili and up to one hundred ingredients. The legend says no one thought it would work and it’s now one of  the most representative dishes of mexican cuisine and one of the most exquisite.

Same thing happened to me with whisky and apple juice on a dark night: I accidentally poured apple juice in my glass and discovered one of my favorite mixes (I know any whisky-geek out there will see it as an obscenity, I don’t give a shit).

…And the list goes on, including but not limited to: Penicillin, the non-newtonian fluid better known as Silly Putty, plastic explosives, wonderful performance improvisations and chocolate chips cookies (miam! miam!).

Unpredictable happy endings and unexpected success are around the corner. See it for yourself the next time you visit a Burger King, mix all the available sodas and discover the ultimate elixir of youth. Just recall “Chance favors the prepared mind” as Pasteur allegedly said.

Something funny happened today: GPS data and location protocols of iPhone’s framework made me revive a love story that worths sharing.

All started today, while I was handling GPS positions and tying them with my new iPhone app. During one of the tests, I started Google Maps application and remembered it’s also capable of displaying 360º photographs of the streets. It’s a Google’s project called Street View.

Procrastination then took me to latitude 43.604363, longitude 1.442951 which happens to be the location of a southern-France city where I made a residence with my first photography teacher.

I spend a virtual tour across some of the streets I remembered, because it’s a city that keeps a lot of valuable experiences for me. I then landed on Avenue Tolosane, the very same place where one of my favorite songs, “Coke, Cigarettes and You” was inspired.

The story happened during summer. I was on that street because I had a date with a girl I really loved. I was going to meet her at a bus stop, but arrived a little earlier. In fact, I didn’t arrived by bus, I actually arrived after walking about 5 or 6 kilometers because my camera’s watch failed and started the journey extra-early (it was 2 or 3 hours forward).

Even after the long walk I was still early, so I went to a bar in the same street to kill some time. I ordered a Coca-Cola (you know how much I love it) and took seat at the bar’s terrace. My cigarettes just were over when I saw her walking down the street (like in that 1964 Orbison’s hit).

We spent a wonderful day and near the end got slept, then waked up at twilight. Just in time for me to catch the bus to the train station, I was leaving the city that same night. We walked to the bus stop (you guessed, over Avenue Tolosane) and waited for the last bus. It was starting to get dark and cold. We hug, I hold her tight and said goodbye. We knew there were good chances we would not see each other again.

After my arrival to Mexico City, I recorded a song during the following weeks, a love song about that day. It has no lyrics but it says something like:

In a place that is new and strange to me, I’ve found someone who makes it familiar.
Someone who doesn’t speak my language but I know how to make smile.
Someone that can tell me with her eyes she really liked that kiss.
Someone I would say: when I’m with you I don’t need anything else…
No wait, we both know that’s a lie, better say:
When I’m with you, I just need Coke, cigarettes, and you…

You can listen the track directly here, in last.fm

weee!

I bought a plant today! Well… Actually, my dad’s wife bought me a plant today. :) We found it while having breakfast: lying alone in the table along butter, coffee, orange juice and hot bread.

The tag said it’s a juniper, which are a conifer, which could explain why it smells like a Christmas tree. The leaves feel a little stiff. I hope they get softer and greener once it gets enough water.

Plants demand a constant and sustained amount of attention, a little bit of it everyday. If you ignore them for a few weeks, they will wither. They are a little bit like the relationships with your family, your friends, or your gal.

I hope I can take care of it (or learn how to).

I’m one year older now.

I learned something crucial during my birthday party: timing is everything, take action!

Are you aware of what kind of information is displayed when you type your email, most frequent internet user-name or your meat-life name on Google?

It could range from the fancy results of your top-edge scientific research on a new intellectual framework for psychiatry, but it could also include some nasty information like: your brainy speeches at your favorite forum, the grades your teacher published in his personal page, YouTube’s comments, or social network websites with your photographs along with tons more of information.

Not long ago, a friend of mine typed in Google the e-mail address of someone we met just to find out  an incommensurable amount of forum threads detailing the entire experience of her termination of pregnancy: questions, answers, microscopic details… Believe me or not, we were just trying to find if she had previously released some interesting achievements in the software industry.

Nothing happened really for me, I just thought: “I didn’t knew it, but it doesn’t matter to me either. That’s the sort of problems you could  face during high-school.”

But now, it’s not just your most curiosity-driven friends at college that could search for you in Google. It could be your employer, a person who feels attracted to you or even your parents.

Go ahead, type your name, common user-names or emails and find out what kind of information is out there. Delete it, edit it or use a different identity when posting information that could be used against you in your upcoming political career.

Once upon a time, in a long past age, the Delphic Oracle was the most prestigious and authorative oracle in the world. It has been ages since then and as Heraclitus once noted: “there is nothing permanent except change”. Nowadays, the title of the definitive oracle is claimed  by the mighty internet search engine, Google.

It’s present everywhere at the same time and it’s looking forward to know all things which can be known, past, present and future.  It is capable to respond your most deep and concerning questions like: How can I get rid of the plague that threatens my city? Should I marry her? Do bugs have emotions?

And it’s almost sure it knows something about you.

It’s been six months since my grand-mother passed away. She died at the age of 76 because of ventilatory complications; she was as hard-core smoker.

The same night she died I had a dream with her. I can’t remember it at all but we were having a big time just chatting and smoking like chimneys.

Ancients believed dreams were visitations which could predict the future or carry messages. I feel more sympathetic for Freud’s Interpretation Of Dreams: dreams as messages from our deep-self, as a resource of inner knowledge and a key for self-description. But, who knows?

Farewell, Grandmother…