Viajes de Pepa

How I got to be a Noogler!

2009-10-23T01:39:00.000-07:00

About a month ago I was contacted by a recruiter from Google. This guy saw my profile on LinkedIn and contacted me on Facebook. As strange as this might seem to you, it did seem to me and I responded the recruiter message by telling him how odd this type of contact was.
After a couple of messages (by Gmail, this time) the recruiter called me one afternoon. We spoke for about half an hour and at the end I was told that the the recruitment process could go on and he would have delivered his opinion of me and that conversation to the recruiting managers. At that time I was far from sure that it was going to be successful: I had already gotten much further than many people I know in real life, I had already gotten somewhere many people don't even dream of.

After about a week, I received information, telling me that we could go further still. I received another call and an invitation to go to Dublin, where the EU Google Head Quarters are, to an interview. Again: I was in disbelief. The trip to Dublin was arranged in a couple of days, and I departed by bus in a very cold morning on a Friday. I don't even remember how I got to the offices, but I was not nervous at all.

As soon as I was in the offices, I only thought about taking a picture, but I am very shy and felt ashamed... so I didn't do it.

I did not feel nervous, but someway I totally missed the enormous and awesome replica of Optimus Prime that decorates (guards) the elevators! The interview lasted a little more than 3 hours and I was met by 5 people that day.

I came back to Cork, where I will be living until next week and received the confirmation call a couple of weeks later, when they told me all the details about the job.
I decided to write this today because it's my last day at Siemens, a company that also has been very good to me.
So, this journey will continue between Dublin, where I will be living and working from now, and Cork, where my partner of life will have to stay. Wish me luck!

Those tiny Castles!

2009-09-11T02:14:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, a couple of friends from Amsterdam (in the picture... not my friend, but Amsterdam) came to stay here in Ireland with me. I didn't have a definitive plan before they arrived, but i did surf the net (my Lord, how '90s does that sound) looking for chances. A small variety of tours departing from Cork were available and when my friends arrived, we went to the bus station and decided to take the Blarney Castle Tour. It costs 12 euros, and does not include the ticket to enter the Blarney Castle... which we didn't know until we got there, of course!
The trip was very nice, to be honest and the bus driver was incredibly funny... thank god we understood most of what he said, because the Irish accent is not precisely neat and clear and we would have missed all the jokes.
So, when we got to the Castle, and after paying the unexpected 10 euros of entrance ticket, the second phase of the trip begun. The surroundings of the Castle are incredibly beautiful, and one day is not enough to visit it completely. But, the most interesting thing of all is the Castle itself. The entrance was definitely made by hobbits, at their height... no, better yet: the whole Castle was made by hobbits.
I wonder how those fat piggy kings that we see in paintings were able to get in there! Not to mention going up the tiny narrow stairs: looks like hobbits requested help from their little friends the smurfs to make them! I believe kings didn't visit anything but the ground floor of their properties...
It is obvious to me the Mr. Walt Disney never visited a castle made before the time of Versailles and that his imagination is clearly only as big as was his hate for the Jews! I also really doubt now that princesses were thin beauties with kilometric legs: they would simply not fit into their "suites". The main suite was as big as my closet, and my closet is nothing "Sex and the City"-like; I think that the princess who slept there was a chubby hobbit-like, hairy girl with skin as pale as a vampire and hair full of dandruff and other things!There is a legend that if you kiss the Blarney Stone you receive the gift of eloquence. You have to get to the top of the Castle and wait in line, like if you were a refugee waiting for UNHCR food in Africa... ok, ok, it was not that long. Anyway, we got there and while waiting in line we saw the stone: it was black, but not black by color but black full of dirt, moist and saliva from everybody! We decided to pass by the line and go down without kissing anything, eugh! Besides, I would need a stone to put in my mouth for shutting up, not for talking more... I'm eloquent enough like this... or not?

The Must Visit in your First trip to London

2009-08-28T00:41:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in my previous post, the time had arrived when I had the chance to go to London. I now think that maybe, for many people, it is just another city and there is nothing special about it. In the end, there are literally millions of people who actually live there, who might be even sick of being there, driving along Abbey Road over and over and getting stuck in traffic in Piccadilly Circus due to tourists.
I was a tourist that weekend so, I could not help but think about all the people who was cursing all of us. I went to Buckingham Palace and thought about the Royal Family: maybe they watch once in a while through the window and think about how lame we all are!
Anyway, my trip started in a huge, really huge line in Victoria Station to get subway tickets: they need more staff during the summer months. The cheapest and best way to travel in public transport in London is the Oyster Card. You don't need anything special to have it, it is not personalized. The negative thing about it, is that it can be stolen. But, it costs only 3£, refundable.
After near 2 hours of queue, we headed to the Hotel. We got very lucky and stayed at the Hilton. which we had booked in advance. The Hilton experience is one of those you wanna repeat. To know more about staying at the London Hilton.
Short on time, as we were, we took the typical famous tours: Tower Bridge Exhibition, London Tower (here we were very lucky, because there was an exhibition about Henry VIII), London Eye, a modern attraction that, like the Eiffel Tower, was meant to be there for a short period, but finally stayed. Expensive for many, when you're at the top of the London Eye, you discover you don't wanna get down anymore: it's like being out of this world.
For free, we got to go to Piccadilly Circus, the outside of Buckinham Palace (it allows vivitors, but to walk on the Queen's carpets was not my priority. Maybe next time), the Victoria Memorial, St. James Park, to mention some.
The best experience, for me however, has to be The Houses of the Parliament. History and architechture aside, there is a curiosity: the Parliament in London is divided in 2, the Lords Chamber (those designated by Royal blood) and the Commons Chamber (those elected by popular choice). When the Queen comes to the Westminter Palace to give the annual speech for both chambers, the Lords come to her voluntarily, but the Commons don't. The reunion between the Royal blood ones and the elected ones is sealed by a thing called The Division Bell: in The Houses of the Parliament then, I understood where does the name of Pink Floyd's album come from, and that was very significant for me.

London (is) Calling: Time to Answer!

2009-08-11T02:49:00.001-07:00

When I was a teenager a very influential person in my life came close to me, in the middle of the most important part of my development as a human being, and showed me hell: he brought cassettes (yes, cassettes) to my home and played them. The music was by Pink Floyd. I got caught up immediately in this wonderland. I could literally not believe my ears and did not understand how come I never came across this sound before in my life, specially since I lived in Europe before this.
After that I became more and more hooked to the groups that this influential person showed me. I depended on him and his stock of cassettes to nurture my music culture, and it was great. Then came The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin as well as newer groups such as Oasis, Pulp, Travis, Daft Punk, The Verve and many more that filled my life from that time on, and still do. I fell in love with music more than ever, and most of that music came from UK, Ireland and surroundings. I knew I wanted to go to UK, London mostly of course and now, after 15 years I'm going this week.My expectations are very high and my greatest fear is that it does not look or feel at all like in the videos, like in the song lyrics, like in the thousands of melodies that have invaded my life forever and the millions of hours I've spent watching their videos or listening to their songs, since the Sony Walkman in the early 90s (for me).
However it goes, my dream is coming true. The thing is that all my dreams are becoming true, one after the other, and I almost don't realize how is that happening.
Nowadays, that influential person, the brother, the musician, the designer and the artist is gone forever. He past away at the early age of 32 years (like a rock star), a couple of months ago. The thing I'm going to regret the most of this trip is that he will not be connected to the chat, so that I can let him know everything. People say he is still with me all the time: I don't really know, but if that's true I suppose i won't need chat anymore, though he will know much more than what I can describe with words.

Tech Biz!

2009-07-28T01:11:00.001-07:00

It surely has been a while, since my last post. A few things happened in the last weeks. One of the above is I got a fix job. So, here is the deal: I loved my job as editor for a web sites development company, which payments were unfortunately very irregular. So, being in the technical support centre of Europe, I got a job a as a technical support agent. What do I know about it? I convince myself every day that I know less than the previous day actually, instead of learning more and more. There is no way to be updated in this area of business. So, even if you learn things every day, in this place it's true that the more you know, the more you realize you know nothing.

No big discovery on this matter, since the good and the bad thing about technology is just that: it changes contantly and in a velocity often hard to manage. The ability of a person in managing those changes is going to determine some times even his success or failure. World is cruel, and some people see this fact as another added cruelty to modern world: you learn it, or loose it. It is not a secret that if you want to stay calm and have a quiet life the best choice of carreer is history or something like it, not technology.

We're way passed the industrial era and we don't have anymore years or months, not even weeks or days to adapt to changes. The good and the bad technological environment demands 110% of attention, a high capability, but most of all, above avarage curiosity and a high dose of restlessness. It surely is overwhelming and even if I knew all those things in theory, I never experienced such in my own skin this close. It has been good, and unvaluable experience that I will take towards my personal groth and future.

No antibiotics for you, Missy!

2009-06-16T04:00:00.000-07:00

After 28 years of buying my own antibiotics, whenever I needed them (or thought so) I' ve finally come to a place that reminds me of USA: from the outside it looks carefree, but inside is a bear trap.

Last week I got a mild infection and went to the pharmacy, already too late, being sure that I would have walked out of there with a ciprofloxaxin pack. No, ma'am! I needed a prescription and my ears could not believe it! It was too late in the afternoon to go to my general practitioner and too late in the week to wait until monday. I had to go to the emergency room of the General Hospital to get a prescription for antibiotics: first time in my life!

Somebody went to an open pharmacy to get them for me. Turns out that in Cork there is only one pharmacy open past 9 pm! The person in the pharmacy explained that this is such a small city that emergencies to die for don't happen often. Besides, when you can die of whatever you got, the Hospital gives you the medicine... which was not my case, of course.

Another shocking thing is that the pharmacist counts the pills for you, and gives you only the exact number that, according to the doctor who gave you the prescription, you need!

I researched a little and it turns out that in this "cumbaya my lord-everything is natural" country they are so scared that people gets inmune to antibiotics that they decided to give them only under strict prescription!

So, i took a note: next time I travel abroad I'm gonna bring back some packs of drugs for me, such as painkillers and staff, because I do not see myself waiting for another 3 hours in the ER for an aspirin!

If Anyone tells me again...

2009-06-12T15:47:00.000-07:00

Sadly, for a long long time I heard abroad people talking about northern people as if they were these mercyless vikyngs willing to eat your liver whenever you tried to be friendly. Well, even sadder I find the fact that people is so wrong about it (I mean not sad for me anyway). The thing is that for the past month or so I have been wondering where do mediaterraneans an Latin people get all those misconceptios.

Lately, I'came to think definitely that one or two nice people in Ireland is not just a coincidence, it is actually normal here to be nice to other fellows... which, btw, after living for almost a year in Barcelona and dealing with Catalans seems even strange to me! I don't have lots of friends in Ireland yet, but I've come across a few taxi drivers, interviewers... all nice, for real.

The craziest thing happened to me the other day, when I was heading to the Taxation Office by foot, through Cork City. Of course I had a map in my hands, and then a lady actually walked towards me and adddressed me to ask if I needed help! I mean, is this a real country or am I dead and in paradise, but nobory has found the courage to tell me? I've been a tourist with money, with no money, in Europe, Latin America, North America, alone, with people and NEVER anybody came to me toi actually ask if I needed any help.

The next time anybody tells me that anglo or northern people are a bunch of red haired angry bastards I think I'm going to punch them!

The Sound of Success

2009-06-02T15:50:00.000-07:00

I grew up in a poor family in a third world country. I don't have a problem calling those countries "third world" because, you see, things and words have only the value that people decides to give them and I have decided to not give that phrase much value or make a big deal about whether it can be degradant or not. Anyway, in this poor family of a third world country we did not hoard up fine scotch for anyone and I learned very early that successful men always held a glass of scotch in a hand, usually on the rocks. That sound of ice continuosly jangleing against glass was kept in my brain related to richness and power. Sometimes, when we could afford simply Coke, I would prepare myself a Coke on the rocks (no expensive scotch whatsoever... never) and walk in front of my mother shaking the glass, saying "Do you know what this is? This is the sound os success, mum!"

Now I could afford the scotch but it turns out that makes me sick... really sick. So, in this very moment that I'm very far from home with no returning date, I'm holding a glass in my hand: Coke on the rocks for me, of course and it still sounds like success!