Resting in friendly envorionment

Few days ago I arrived to Riga for a meeting. Since I arrived early (catching the cheapest connection) I had a chance to spend two wonderful days with my old and dear friend. We went to her aunts place near (100 m) to the sandy beach of Baltic sea. What was so great in these days was the fact that we had nothing to do. Now this may sound strange and boring, but when you come from one busy and stressful environment and are about to go to another one that will be full of work, socializing and sleepless night, this break comes perfect for both body and mind.

Still, this doesn't mean that we slept the whole day. The days consisted of long walks on the beach, cooking (which I enjoy very much, but don't have a chance to do properly often), long night talks under the stars on the terrace and some creative artwork.

In life you meet certain people that for one reason or another you build a special connection to, even if you might not know this in the beginning. What I realized during this few days is that it's important to never forget those friends. Even if you grow apart during time or lose contact (though today, this is very hard to do completely thanks to the internet and modern technology) it's refreshing to reconnect and every now and then spend some time together.

Another realization came from the "artwork" activity. I forgot how fun it can be playing with clay and doing stuff with your hands. Though similar feeling comes from coding or other virtual work that I've been occupied with in the last decade, really using you hands, your touch, to shape real world, materialized things has it charm. Creativity is important here too and a good way to improve it.

VIP Concerts

My girlfriend invited me today to go with her on one of the Queen Tour concerts. We still haven't decided exactly where to go, which will depend on the ticket price, dates and location. But options are: Budapest, Milan (most suiting for me, since I'll probably be here in September) and Vienna. I'm not the biggest Queen fan, but I decided to go to the concert, amongst other reasons, to have this experience. I've never been to a concert of famous international artists (if you don't count standing outside of concert space of the Rolling Stones concert held in Zagreb 10 years ago). All of this made me think what would be concerts that I would like to go to in my life. Here is the list in random order:

• Robbie Williams
• U2
• The Corrs (because of some high school memories)
  
• Gibonni (Croatian artist)
  
• Santana

Why I haven't had more concert experiences till now? I would say there are two main reasons.
I'm not a fan. Or better to say I'm not a huge fan of any single artist or group. I love many things but I've never had any favorite, nor a group poster on my wall/door (which I think is a must for any fan).
It's all about money. Usually the concerts are too expensive for an experience of 2-3 hours. It's true you get into the crowd and feel as one, but there are other ways you can do that.

All this being said, I am looking forward to this experience, but it's only in autumn, so many more things to come in between.

Sex And The City

Two days ago, here in Milan started an event known as Design week. During which there are many design related happenings around the city. The biggest one is Furniture Fair that hosts exhibitions of most famous (many of course Italian, but not only) designers of the world. I must say that I've not been able to go to that fair neither last nor this year. Still I hear it's great.

Other then the fair, many shops, galleries, design studios and public places show traces of this event and it's easy to get the filling of it even if you don't have invitation for special events or money to buy tickets for all the classy things. So in this spirit last night I went to see Citroen expose. First it took us (my friends and me) to find the place (directions were not very clear), but when we finally got there we had what to see. It was being held on the last floor of 31 stories skyscraper. Entering that place, we were immediately served with champagne and realized that the whole room is filled with people dressed up to the occasion. After wondering about for some time we settled next to particularly interesting part of exhibition where on the surface that was made of many cubes there was projected a video commercial. Of course, for us engineers, the most interesting was how did they managed to project to such an complex surface and while discussing this, a guy approached asking us: "Do you want to know how this was done?". Though we had a pretty good idea, we humored the guy into telling us and it turned out he was the one doing it. So we had a nice talk with the main designer of the show and by the end he was inviting us to come to his studio and see the what they do, maybe even work there.

When we finally finished talking to him I couldn't help feeling like being in an episode of the show mentioned in the title. I was just waiting for Carry to show up around the corner or Samantha to start flirting with some guy by the bar. Soon we left the place discovering what else is there to see in the city and only then we realized we should have asked if there is some private party that the main designer could get us in :-)

Childhood dreams

Yesterday (or more correctly, early this morning) I watched a "Last Lecture" given by professor Randy Pausch for Carnegie Mellon University. About one month before giving this lecture he was diagnosed with a cancer and was given 3-6 months to live. He decided to do exactly that - live. He's lecture was about achieving your childhood dreams, which he actually managed to do quite well and all of that before he got the "bad news". The whole lecture was very inspiring, because it shows what you can do when you are passionate about something and that we should not be stopped by "bricked walls" that we all run into sooner or later. What a really liked is his affection for his wife, family and friends which he shows in many occasions.

Anyway, I could write for some time about all the things that touched me in this video, but I would rather just suggest you to see it.

Still, one thing that I couldn't get out of my head afterwards is thinking about my childhood dreams. I realized that of the big ones I do remember, I didn't achieve any - yet. However, that only gave me hope that I'll have interesting things to do in the future, rather then making me depressed.

So in order to not forget them again, here are the ones I do remember:

• become a ninja
• build my own house
• visit Lego Land and build a whole min-city from it (measure: to fill my whole room)
• fly to space
• wake up one day and realize I have super powers (which ones depended on which superhero I was into the most)

And last, but not least, here is the video of the "Last Lecture". Enjoy:

Letters, words, sentances, books

As a child I didn't like to read. I'm not sure why. Maybe because I didn't discover the right books when I was small and then, when the school started, it became an obligation. And I guess there is something in the basic human nature to define things he somebody else imposes.

It wasn't until high school that I realized that I do like (some) books and only in college I started really loving the act of reading. The only problem then was that I was already late and chronically without time (see two posts before). But this year I decided to make a change. How did I solve the problem of time? Well, in general by getting more organized, but I'll write about this some other time. As far as books are related, I try to read as often as I can. I stopped watching TV (and TV shows on computer) and I always have a book next to my bad. Major help are also audio books. It helps pass time while commuting to work/school/airport when it's unpractical to hold a book in hand (or you should keep attention on your personal belongings - Milan is not the safest place to live in).

How did I solve the problem of being late and missing out on years of reading. Well, that's not something one can solve that easy. But I've made a list, with the help of others, of must read books. And I'm just taking it one by one.

What I would also like to start doing is to keep a journal of the things I've read and how I felt about them and any other associations that I might have at the moment.

That's one of the things you can expect to find here from time to time.

I'm back, this time for good?

It's been 1.5 year since I've opened this blog and this is only the third post here. Something must be wrong? The truth of the matter is that back then I really wanted to have a blog and all my friends had it. I didn't really know what I'll write about or better to say didn't know what my story is. Now I have some idea. Actually it's just the need to write things down. What kind of things? Ideas, future wishes, dreams, book reviews and such. I hope.. no.. I know this time will be different :-)