During the last month I added some extra stuff to the blog.
I added feedburner support to manage the RSS subscription and now you can see how many people are subscripted. I added also some scripts to monitor the traffic using google analytics.
I have readers in nine different countries bun most of the traffic are from United Kindom and Spain. And some of the countries have only one visit. In particular I have two visits that are difficult to explain.
The first one, from Brasil. Do anyone in Brasil know me? The other one is more extrain, from West Hollywood in United States.
Yesterday, we visited a little and pretty city name Derry. It is really near the border with the Republic of Ireland and its history it's a good example of the history of the whole Northern Ireland.
The bus trip to Derry it's quite long and we wanted to make most so we got up early in the morning. Our departure was at 9:30 am - very early for a Sunday!
One of the special things of this city is that the whole walls are well preserved - they have even cannons!
In fact, one side of the city wall splits the traditional catholic and protestant areas. In front of the walls there a place known as Freederry with a lot of pro-catholic murals. Over the walls, cannons guard the protestant positions. Here all the murals are of the same community, not like in Belfast.
In this area one can see graffiti and symbols pro-RIRA and other stuff related.
Caution RIRA
RIRA graffiti in the roof of a funerary (and Finnish tourists).
In the middle of that place, even the streetlight have political messages! For example, the Irish flag colours. I found in one streetlight a pro-Catalonia-independence label. In that moment I was thinking "Wow, it should be the only thing like that in that city and I found it".
But I was very wrong! There are one full mural of that. I am yet freaking out...
One local man told us that the inauguration of a new mural it was going to be in 10 minutes when we were leaving from that place. Then the situation became weirder and weirder... We and other 20 local people were waiting in front of a Che Guevara mural that was inaugurated by the Cuban ambassador.
"Before" and "after".
Elocuent and non understandable words of the ambassador.
We made more things also. We visited the one church, the Tower Museum and the Linen Hall Bar. The museum visit was 2 quids (student fare) and it was worthy. Half of the museum explain the history of the city related with the Irish and British people. One friendly employee guided us in that part. Their explanations were very interesting and funny. He also took our "family photo" in the roof of the tower and told us about the Linen Hall Bar. Thank you pal!
The rest of the museum is an interactive travel to the Trinidad Valencera, a Spanish ship of the Armada Invencible that was defeat in Derry.
It was definitely a great day!
(And we used the dance pad when we was back at home ;)
The university prepared a lot of events for the international freshers during our first week. The event I like more is the Ceili dancing.
Ceili dancing is the traditional Irish dancing and relies also in the traditional Irish music. In our case, we had a little music band and one man explaining the different dances to all of us just before starting. That dances has some movements like some steps in some direction, turning, people making arcs or circles, kicking the ground and so on. After each loop, there are another movement that changes the groups of people that are dancing together. This is made in a way that is modular and endless (in theory). That part remembers me the algorithm dance, but this is much better ;)
Another advantage is that permutations helps yout to know more people - actually, only to say hello for a couple of seconds.
At the end of the day I was danced all the dances of the event! And I have a little video of one of the dances in which our row was resting during one loop.
Today I am going to write a few about the survival of the erasmus students of my floor.
Local students leave Elms in the weekend and they came back with mam with their dirty clothes and cclaiming for food. In the other hand, this is not possible for the erasmus people. The final result is that in our kitchen there are social activities while the rest of the village looks like a ghost village. (Cool!)
Yesterday, we went out to a sort of mall with night clubs named Oddysey. We enjoyed the Box club, that has good but loud music. This place is very far from our kitchen but you can solve it with some taxis for up to seven people. There is a phone in the reception building to book taxis for free.
On the Box with a lot of girleens
More photos clicking in the last one.
Other important thing for the erasmus community is the nearest Tesco. It is the cheapest shop that is worthy to visit on foot. We are poor and all the things here are very expensive, so in many cases we buy the cheapest products. That means: Tesco sliced bread, Tesco oil, Tesco Tesco or products with own brand but with the label Selected by Tesco. There are even Selected-by-Tesco mobile phones!
What is the next? Blogs Selected by Tesco. In order to implement this silly thing I made a label that all of you can use in your blog.
The html code is that (Copy&Shit to your page): <a href="http://www.tesco.com/"><img border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5118384625442632930" style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixi57KvVmVNTRXHzSlVl-GPE7yaHsGMppUP1yHhqRBaJFKFimzYBBV7xV2la0EXvBbxKovK7MDWNlPuArJNPGvvmYUfG2jd_pO5xgfNYlgCapAi0N2J1tmBI7puPRsmbMMfz8tbIMr_2s/s200/tescobutton.png"/></a>
Today I am going to write about that japanese hero of a lot children: Takahashi Meijin.
This guy was working in the videogame industry when the ultimate game system was Nintendo -- that 8-bit console. He worked in Hudson Software and the main character of the game Adventure Island is himself. In fact, the japanese name of that game is Takahashi Meijin no Bouken Jima.
But he is not only a videogames developer is an autentic crack that is able to hit 16 times a second the gamepad buttons. This is so powerful that he can split a watermelon only with his fingers:
Although, his greatest achievement was the Game King title in 1995. That is like the "Japanese Videogame Championship", but on tv. This is the opening of the special program:
And this is the competition.
After that he received the title of Meijin, that is a title with deep roots in the Japanese culture and you can translate to the occidental idea of Master of the Universe. Actually, Meijin is the title that has the champion of one of the most important and old go championships that started in the Edo period.
But all this formal title didn't prevent that he made that on tv:
PS: Please, forgive that post! The main reason for writing that is that I am too lazy to search this youtube links each time I need to show this to somebody.
Today is the birthday of one of the portuguese girls. Happy birthday Isabel!
But the day has been very different from Bartek's birthday. Instead of a drink-driven party has been a food-driven party. In the next photo you can see the preparation:
Women cooking Men beering
All the food was tasty, specially the cake!
Before all this party we were working out on the gym. Consequently, the food vanished very fast.
But the great success of the day was the meal that Pasi and me prepared for the lunch. Absolutely delicious. The only error made was the amounth of food cooked (almos the double of proyected) but our Polish friends helped us ;)
Spaghetti with bacon & dutch cheese Best food ever cooked by Pasi & me
As long as our food is not Spanish nor Finnish we need a new denomination: Suomiñola food. That is the logo:
