Can't sleep... Two nights in a row.

I keep getting these stupid late night thoughts at 11pm or so every night. No idea why they are happening. I thought maybe the mate as usual was getting me in a thinking mood... But I'm actually trying to sleep! It's just not working.


Life overall is going better. I am actually doing a lot of things, have projects and goals in my life, and am working for them. So why do I feel like something is bothering me?

Barça jersey at Camp Nou, Barcelona.

I have had a couple more adventures since my last update. I went to Barcelona for a week in December to visit my sister. It was a great time! Really enjoyed it. Gave me lots to think about too.

The tiny road up the mountain... Yeah, it was a dirt road, with tracks.

Since Barcelona, the only other big trip I have had was to Wintergreen in Virginia to go skiing a couple weeks ago. It was crazy. Drove up on Monday morning with Carlos, and we got stuck on a tiny mountain road. He had to push, and I was trying to maneuver and not to kill us, hehe. It all worked out in the end. To think that we were in that tiny Chevrolet Aveo that I used to hate... I really love that car now! And it is MY car now. :D

Victorious picture with the car at Reeds Gap on top of the Blue Ridge.

Apart from those trips, I have been working a lot. Getting money to save for the future. Mostly for school and to be more independent. At first I was also partying a lot, but I am going to start budgeting my money now. I need to save as much money as I can. Like my grandfather used to say "Vivir vive cualquiera, la cosa es saber vivir" or "Anybody can live, but you have to know how to live (to its fullest or something like that)". He was a very wise man.


I do think that these late night thoughts are along those lines. Something about where I am going. Would the 10-year-old me be proud of who I am? Of who I am going to become?


Life is really complicated. And there's always lots of things going on. I am glad that I have written down some personal goals as to what I want to do in the next couple of years. I think we should all do that every now and then. Have those goals in mind, and know what we have to do day in and day out to accomplish those goals in the long run. Nothing is impossible, right? We can accomplish our goals if we set our minds to them.


That is exactly what I need. Maybe this blog post is not for others to read, maybe it's more of a reminder to myself. The more reminders, the easier it is to remember things, right? It's easy to overwhelm yourself. Sometimes we want to do too many things in life. And it all feels way bigger than we can handle. In reality, we just have to think of how each thing has its own time and place, and each goal we set for ourselves can be accomplished. Prioritizing helps, too.


Anyways. I want to save money. I want to go back to school and finish my ISE degree. I want to take some flight lessons to start my dream to become a pilot. I want to rely on myself. I want to earn everything I want.


One step at a time.


For now, I'll just go to sleep. Have to wake up in 5 hours to go to work. Good night world! Zaijian!

The President of the United States of America! (And update on life)

At Reynolds Coliseum to see Obama! Im at NCSU and Im going to see Obama! This is so fricking cool!!!!! Its full of people and its so hot. I think, and hope, that this will start soon! Ill update this later.

SUPER LATE UPDATE:

That event was FRICKING AMAZING!!!!! I don't know what to say about it! It was just awesome. The NCSU Marching Band played great music, then there was a small business owner talking, and then I saw the President! (granted, I was across the coliseum from him, but still, I saw him! I saw Obama!)

I took some pictures and videos of it all. Most are up on Facebook already, and I'll add some to the blog later this week. Now that we're almost in the beginning of December :-P

I do hope that the whole American Jobs Act passes. This recession is really getting annoying now... Hopefully France, Germany, and the US can plan something to try to get everything sorted out. And China should join in and help too. Obama is a great speaker, but the Congress hasn't been doing what we have been wanting it to do. Reminds me of what in Argentina is the "Que se vayan todos" movement some years ago, where people would vote so that NOBODY got re-elected and to see some new faces in Congress. I wonder if that would be of any help here nowadays. Get some fresh minds in there.

Moving on... Occupy Movement. What do we do about it? What are we doing with it? What is it doing? To tel you the truth, I hope that they do get SOMETHING done. I've gone by Occupy Raleigh some times, and I have stayed there a while. Good people, very educated and most of them know what they are talking about. But how can we all become part of a solution to work together? Clearly the neoliberalism and capitalist corporations have been ruining us... But so has our own government, whom we are supposed to be part of. So what can be done about it all? Clearly we need to go out and vote and call our Senators and Congressmen what we want, the issues that are important to us, and make sure that they know we are not to be played with.

Next thing... Relationships. They are hard. Long distance just means they get exponentially harder by the centimeter. I guess in the end, everything that can happen will happen, and we just have to make the best of everything. We have to learn from our mistakes, crawl before we stand up, and walk before we run. If you love somebody, will you let them go? Food for thought people.

Well, I have enjoyed updating my blog again, hehe. But I have to go do some homework and study. Finals are coming up! I am pretty ready for my French test of course, Industrial Engineering shouldn't be too bad. Physics will be tough, but I think I can take it. Chinese (yes, I'm learning Mandarin) should be interesting. I'm doing pretty good this semester, so really looking forwards to teh classes next semester! Anyways, I have to go study! Wish me luck people! Good bye! To a good future and a great week!

El Tano

Okay..... I got a couple of things to say...

I have a couple of things to say.
First of all, if you haven't tried it yet, and you're using Google Chrome, you should get Add Speech extension and the Angry Birds for Chrome extension. They are awesome.

Now on to more serious business.
I had a foot wart. It first appeared when I was like 8 or 9. Now it's back. It came back last October or so.

My wart after it fell off some 30 minutes ago today.

The hole on my foot, with some blood from the old scar.

At first I just left it there, it was small and I didn't care. But now I have been fighting it with Walgreens brand Maximum Strength Wart Remover Liquid. It has like 17% Salicylic Acid. Today I saw the first big effects of Salicylic Acid. I was playing the guitar. And I got an itch on my foot. Without thinking about it, I scratched and BAM! The wart started peeling off with my skin. I had kind of broken the papillae before just because I was confusing my skin with the removal liquid, so there was a little crust along with the skin. But that's not the point. The point is that it just pretty much fell right off. Sure, it's not gone completely and I still might have a couple more weeks of treatment, maybe less. But can we use a mix of  this with some Salicylic Acid to help fight cancer? Can we use it at least for skin cancer?

Think about it.
Apply patches or bandages with some good concentration of Salicylic Acid. Moisten and change patches every 12 hours. Over the course of time, the skin gets ready to peal off. And then suddenly, we have no more skin cancer!!!

The bubble that forms when you apply the Salicylic Acid.

I'm sure it's not as easy as that.

But think about all the money saved. Think about all the pain and suffering you'd be saving your patients from. There's so much to do with this!!!
Somebody really needs to start doing some serious research as to how we can make a good concentration of Salicylic Acid that will play together with the other cure to make the cells die and to make the cells shed.

The only thing I can think that would limit it would be the fact that you could only use it for skin cancer. I guess it might not be very applicable to other types. But that doesn't mean it's not worth a try, does it???

I hope somebody who's going into biomedical engineering or something like that reads this blog. Don't forget to credit me for this idea later on!

Anyways. Those are the big things I had to say.

Other than that, my future plans...
If you don't know yet, in August I'm going to The Netherlands to study at TU Delft!!! I got accepted!!! Woo!!!!! I'm super excited, and really looking forwards to doing lots of research and work.
But before that, Esmee is coming here in July!!! WOOHOO!!!!!! That I'm definitely excited for.
And I surprised her, bought her the ticket, and now I told her the plan of going to Orlando so we can go to Disney World and Universal Studios!!! 2011 is going so much better!!!

Well friends, that is all for now I guess. I'll update you all sometime next week, after all, Wednesday May 25th is my 21st birthday, hehe.

Have a good week!

Adios!

Now Recording.....

So... For those of you who don't know, I play the harmonica and the guitar. I've been playing guitar for a longer time, but for the past year and some months I started playing the harmonica, even bought some more harmonicas, since I used to have only one in the key of C.
I played harmonica when my ex-roommate Josh played guitar. And it is really fun. Sometimes we still get together and play some music.
Anyways, so I realized the other day that the Rockband Microphone for the Wii is just a USB Mic by Logitech... So I plugged it into my Ubuntu laptop and tested it on the Sound Recorder. Then I installed Audacity and thought of trying to record something from it.
This is what came from that recording, my little cover singing, playing guitar, and harmonica.
My cover of "Mary Jane's Last Dance" by Tom Petty

I know its no professional sound and the voice volume is a bit off. Also the harmonica at parts seems to be overblown... thats what I get for using cheap Hohner Bluesband harmonicas, which are still awesome for me, hehe.
Anyways, I hope you enjoy that song. I am thinking of recording some other songs soon. Maybe "No se estar Enamorado" by Jarabe de Palo, and some Estopa songs.

Also, my friend Lucas, who has a studio, told me he's starting a band and they could use one more guitar player, so I might go practice with them. But he has had some other projects before that didn't go through before, so I'm not getting too excited about this one.
But I will let all of you know what happens with that if it does go through.
I hope you all have a great Thursday!

El Tano

Now Recording.....

So... For those of you who don't know, I play the harmonica and the guitar. I've been playing guitar for a longer time, but for the past year and some months I started playing the harmonica, even bought some more harmonicas, since I used to have only one in the key of C.
I played harmonica when my ex-roommate Josh played guitar. And it is really fun. Sometimes we still get together and play some music.
Anyways, so I realized the other day that the Rockband Microphone for the Wii is just a USB Mic by Logitech... So I plugged it into my Ubuntu laptop and tested it on the Sound Recorder. Then I installed Audacity and thought of trying to record something from it.
This is what came from that recording, my little cover singing, playing guitar, and harmonica.
My cover of "Mary Jane's Last Dance" by Tom Petty

I know its no professional sound and the voice volume is a bit off. Also the harmonica at parts seems to be overblown... thats what I get for using cheap Hohner Bluesband harmonicas, which are still awesome for me, hehe.
Anyways, I hope you enjoy that song. I am thinking of recording some other songs soon. Maybe "No se estar Enamorado" by Jarabe de Palo, and some Estopa songs.

Also, my friend Lucas, who has a studio, told me he's starting a band and they could use one more guitar player, so I might go practice with them. But he has had some other projects before that didn't go through before, so I'm not getting too excited about this one.
But I will let all of you know what happens with that if it does go through.
I hope you all have a great Thursday!

El Tano

Wow, haven't posted since last year!

Pretty crazy. Haven't posted in some time now.
So much stuff to comment on....
Lets see. In no particular order...
I've seen Dutch people ice skating on the pond here in the neighborhood (which is 2 to 3 meters deep).
I've celebrated New Years with Esmee, her grandparents, her uncle Gerard and his family.
We shot lots of fireworks, inflated some hope balloons, had a great time.
I got a guitar, a guitar case, and Boondock Saints 1 and 2 Blu-ray for Christmas. The guitar from Esmee and the other 2 things from her grandmother. In reality Esmee told her grandmother I would love those things, so lots of kudos to her, jejeje.
I got sick last week and had pain all over my body and some fever. Couldn't go to the Escher Museum OR Ikea on Wednesday. For those of you that don't know, I really like the Escher paintings and had wanted to go to the museum since the first time I heard of it, and I just love Ikea.
We went to Esmee's second cousin, Kai's, birthday and I spoke more Dutch. One of Esmee's second uncles invited me to watch a football game if I'm here more during the season. He is a Feyenoord fan, but Esmee's other uncle, Kai's father, is an Ajax fan, so they seemed to make fun at each other quite a lot. Overall it was a great evening.
We babysat Nina again, was really fun, we ate pizza, drank Taksi Pineapple juice, but Nina wouldn't fall asleep. I drove us there and back, so it was always fun to drive on the snow.
I drove Esmee to Pijnacker to pick up Julia, then to Zoetermeer and I dropped them off at Imke's for a girls night that they were going to have. Sounds like they had fun except for Imke's choice for a movie, if you want to know about it, ask Esmee. I picked them up and then we went home.
On Christmas Eve we went out to eat at McDonalds because I really REALLY wanted to eat a Big and Tasty, since they don't have those in the US anymore. It was worth it. Pretty much we all got Big Tasty's except for Esmee, who got 2 cheesburgers.
It snowed some more spontaneously here and there time and time again. The snow was pretty much untouched until this past week, when temperatures became constant at a high of 2C, and by today I think most of the snow all around here has melted.
Hopefully this thursday we will got o the Naturallis in Leiden. I'll probably drive on the highway and all, will be exciting! Not that it would be my first time though, since one time last summer on the way back from Zoetermeer Esmee's GPS sent us like all the way to The Hague to do a U-turn and then go back towards Berkel on another exit. Yes, her GPS is very weird.
It's very weird to think that I'm leaving in 10 days... I just realized that today....
It's like all this vacation is ending way too soon.
And suddenly next week on Thursday I'll be flying to NY.
It all gets me a bit depressed really.
But I guess I'll just have to enjoy these last days here even more and do as much as possible.
Which reminds me, I'll finish this blog right now. I'll write later in a couple of days.
Oh, btw.
I bought Esmee a ring and earrings for Christmas. She loved them. Too bad the ring is a bit small, but on Wednesday we'll have to go and change it for another one I guess.
I hope you all started a great year great and keep good energy, good thoughts, and a good vibe. I have a feeling this year will be good.
Doei!

Warm-er weather

As the title says, the weather is a bit warmer.
The past week the snow has been slowly melting and the ice on the canals has been slowly returning to its liquid state. It is kind of weird to realize that the ground temperature is warmer than the water temperature. The snow was melting very fast, but there are probably canals that still have ice on them now, after 7 days of no cold temperatures. Well, it's still chilly.
The highest temperature was 6 degrees probably once or twice this week. Today it's been 3 degrees all day and at night seems to be going to 1 or maybe a bit lower too. We'll see how it goes over the next couple of days.
If you haven't already, you should go look at my pictures on Facebook. Sorry for the weird order, if you want to know the order I won't explain it again, but you can see it on the post just before this one.
Wanna know something interesting? I almost got in trouble at a supermarket for taking pictures :-P It's all because they have this very interesting and efficient system... You pay like 50 euro cents for this wireless scanner and you take it along with you in the supermarket. Every item you pick up you scan and so it tells you how much money and what items you're spending on. No longer want an item? Press delete and it's out of your list. When you're done, you go to a separate area next to the registers. There all you do is you hang the scanner, the machine detects how much it has to charge, you pass your credit/debit/pinpass/whatever card, you print the receipt. You walk up to the doors, scan your receipt, and the door opens to let you through.
Well, I took a picture of the little scan and where you pay and all. And the manager of Albert Heijn came to tell me you can't take pictures without permission. But I answered in Dutch so he just spoke very fast in Dutch too. Then Esmee said I was a tourist from Amerika and he said how he didn't think the system would be in Amerika for another like 20 years or so with how slow it is in a lot of things, so I showed him the pictures and he said it was fine.
Funny anecdote I guess, haha.
This last week we didn't have to babysit again. I don't know how, but the computer is repaired. Apparently after McAfee was gone the 2nd time, those viruses were erased too. Trend Micro hasn't found any again either. We'll see how it keeps going.
Friday we ate fries from the snack bar. I also ate a kaas suffle, really good cheese thing. Tomorrow I'm going to make empanadas, so we'll see how that goes!
In other news, I have been applying for some temporary jobs, all Christmas season and stuff. Hopefully I can work soon.....
And I want to go to the Escher museum in The Hague. Maybe this or next week I'll go, hopefully with Esmee.
Also I think this week we're going to go to Ikea. I always love going to Ikea, loads of fun and get to eat some swedish meatballs, hehehe.
For Christmas there are some different plans, seems like we had invited Oma and Opa for dinner and all, but they might go to Appeldoorn to Gerard's house to celebrate it. So we'll see what happens in the end.
For New Years, called OudeNieuwe in Dutch (Old New... weird name), Imke and Marc have invited us to their New Years Party, so I will be buying some fireworks this week, either at the Driesprong or back at the Intratuin.
Intratuin by the way is such an awesome shop! Imagine a Lowes where a lot of the products change seasonally and they have like Christmas decorations. But not just Christmas decorations. The whole place felt like I was entering a theme park or something. It was so cool! So many Christmas things all over the place. Trees, Santa Clauses. They even had a manger and some goats. Oh, and this VW Minivan with a train track running through it and with more Christmas decorations! Oh, and since there is a gigantic pet section, people go shopping with their pets. Yes. People had their dogs with them. I guess it makes sense to be able to try a jacket on your dog before you buy it. But probably the best thing of Intratuin was that I FINALLY SAW CLOGS! Like real clogs! Wooden clogs! It was awesome!!! I almost bought some but I didn't really have the money for them at the moment. Maybe later. Would be a great thing to have as a decoration. Maybe for my parents house :-P
Also, let me tell you about the Internet/Cable/Phone here. They pay like 58 per month. The Internet every like 3 days stops working. UPC really sucks apparently. And its supposed to be fiber with 25mbps or so but running speedtests I only get like 2.75 mbps... So yeah, Esmee says they get screwed by UPC. I wonder why they don't switch ISP's. I guess the rest of the things work pretty well. Except the phone seems to lose calls very often. I don't know, just kind of odd to me I guess.
Oh, also, there is no 24 hour support line. Dutch people should really request that. It's good and can be very important. What if your phone stops working and you have no cell phone? I do wonder if other companies have that here.
Anyways. For this week I guess I'll see about some temporary work and will look forwards to going to Ikea and the Escher Museum.
Oh, want to know the stupidest thing of going to Den Haag to get my sofi to work here? My camera died before even leaving. Yeah. Sucked. I finally go to Den Haag and the battery dies. But I promise photos when I go to the Escher museum!
Anyway. I hope you all had a better and warmer week than I did. I'll update sometime mid week I think.
Doei!