Chichipanguanorrea 3.0

Picture by Luis Pérez

A corraleja is a typical celebration from the Colombian coast regions where people gather in a place similar to a bullfight ring and fight several bulls. The difference with a bullfight is that there is no matador in corralejas, but anyone can jump in and fight the bull. And the bull is never killed. It is very dangerous and lots of people get injured. But you can stay off the ring and just watch the whole thing while you listen to a live band and drink alcohol.

Yesterday I went to a Corraleja with my friends from college and it was very fun to watch but also disturbing to see all these drunk guys fighting the bull and doing it for money or alcohol. They would ask the crowd for money after doing different dangerous tricks like jumping on top of the bull, and they will also show you their wounds and ask you for money to pay the hospital.

After the corraleja was over we went outside the ring and listened to a vallenato concert by Silvio Brito and stayed there until 11pm dancing and drinking more aguardiente. Finally a friend took me home and my sister was having a good bye party since she will be moving to Virginia next week to pursue a PhD.

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It all started on July 30th at 3:30am when I get this phone call:

Me: “He…mfff…llo…bmgrrr?”
Cab driver: “Hello are you Mr. Jaramillo? I´m the cab driver and I´m waiting for you outside your house”
Me: “Dude! I asked for a cab for July 31st! You came 24 hours too soon!”
Cab driver: “Oh… errr.. crap!… sorry sir. I will cancel this service then”
Me: “No problem, just make sure you pick me up tomorrow at this time. Thanks.”

Ok that wasn´t really the start of the trip, but it was a funny story. By the way, if you ever need a great cab driver in Austin let me know and I will give you Fernando´s phone number.

It all REALLY started on July 31st at 3:30am when I get a phone call from my cab driver Fernando and he takes me to the airport. I got there at 4:15am and there was no line. Check-in and passing security was extremely fast. My first plane was Austin-Atlanta departing at 5:30am. In Atlanta I had a Donut and orange juice for breakfast and then at 10:30am took a plane from Atlanta to Miami. I got to Miami at 12:30pm and had pizza for lunch. In the past being at the Miami airport has been a nightmare bearable only because you can buy beer and walk around the airport with it, so I had one Heiniken for lunch, and then a Pacifico but I have to say that this time the airport wasn´t as crazy as other times.

Finally we got in the plane to fly to Medellín. The plane had some decorations related to the Feria de las flores which is the city festival celebrated once a year in early August. But that wasn´t all: the Avianca crew in charge of the flight had a few surprises for us the passengers. First they played Me voy para Medellín by El Combo de las Estrellas and then played La tierra by Ekhymosis (rock band from Medellín that Juanes used to be part of). Then they announced that Buchanan´s was sponsoring the fun factor in our trip, so they did a raffle and gave away t-shirts and a bottle of scotch and then gave scotch to all the passangers. Off course I had mine on the rocks. But the best thing came when we were about to land: instead of landing directly at the Jose Maria Cordoba airport located 30 minutes from Medellín when you usually don´t get to see the city, the pilot flu over Medellín for about 15 minutes at a not-very-high altitude where you could see all the main city landmarks like the Coltejer building, the Atanasio Girardot stadium, the old airport, the pueblito paisa, etc… it was a blast and at this point we were all singing, drinking, screaming, clapping! It was like being on a flying Chiva.

Anyway, that last part of the trip was a blast, and then seeing my family was even better. We stopped at Rancherito and had a picada and finally came home. I can´t wait to see what is next, but I´m having sancocho for lunch today!

It has been almost a month since I wrote my last post two days before my birthday. I have to thank everyone who made it to my birthday party. It was really fun. I also want to thank all the friends and family members that sent me happy birthday wishes through emails, instant messages, phone calls, etc…

So what does it feel to turn 30 years old? I got to tell you that it feels really good. Someone told me recently that when you turn 30, you are now officially an adult. You can no longer excuse your stupidity by saying things like: “I was young and I didn’t knew any better!”. It also feels great that many people don’t think I’m 30, so I can pretend to be young and stupid if I really want to. But honestly, playing the grown up mature adult role suits me better.

My parents gave me Garmin nüvi 200 GPS for my car as a present. It is a really cool device and I’ve been playing with it a little bit. I really want to do a road trip to see its full potential and I’m also curious about Geocaching. I also got from my friends in Austin a really nice gift: a $220 certificate from Amazon which I’m still planning to spend. I’m debating between buying a lens for my D40x, a DVD recorder, an Airport Express or a bunch of toilet paper.

Una trova a mis treintas.

Thirty years ago, on June 8, 1978, Intel Corp. introduced its first 16-bit microprocessor, the 8086, with a splashy ad heralding “the dawn of a new era.” Overblown? Sure, but also prophetic. While the 8086 was slow to take off, its underlying architecture — later referred to as x86 — would become one of technology’s most impressive success stories.

computerworld.com

How would you celebrate if you were an X86? What would you do if your 30th birthday was coming soon, like in 22 days? How would you celebrate this memorable/tragic event?

I’m turning 30 years old this coming June 28th. I’m excited and scared, but none the less I want to celebrate big time! I’m considering throwing a big party at my house and invite as many friends as possible. I need to start working on the evite and the party logistics. As far as alcohol I already have a big bottle of Aguardiente Antioqueño and a big bottle of Chivas Regal and I’m also considering buying a keg of NXNW beer.

Only 22 days to plan this memorable/tragic event. I’ll keep you posted of my progress. If you have some cool ideas, make sure you drop a comment.

Update - June 11th
The evite was sent last weekend. I invited over a 100 people knowing that about half of them would not be able to make it because they live in Colombia, Germany, Canada, etc… Currently 29 people are coming to the party and 4 are tentative. I will arrange what to buy later, once I have a better estimate on the attendance.

There is a time in every blogger’s life when you simply don’t have much interesting material to post about, so you decide to create a post about the last few things that have been going on. Unfortunately this is not the first time I do this, so feel free to drop some hate comments and show me your love and appreciation.

Last week I was recognized in my company with the ‘Engineering Excellence’ award which is given to about 8-15 engineers every year. I was pretty happy with the award because it motivates me to keep working hard and doing a good job at work. (Note to self: update resumé)

Last weekend it was Claudia Lorente’s 30th birthday which she celebrated at her place with a fabulous cricket game. A lot of friends were there and I had a great time. The day after was Gabriel’s bday and we celebrated it in my house. I hadn’t had a party in my house in a while and I figured I could have one. The party was really fun, lots of friends, alcohol and dancing until 5am. The next morning I had to play soccer with the NI Eagles and we beated team Black Star 2-0. There are only two games left this season and it looks like we have a chance to finish 4th or 5th place if we win the last two games. Right now we are in 7th place.

I already did my taxes which I still need to send, including a big fat check that I wish I didn’t have to pay. I was surprised how quickly I did my taxes. Either after 6 years doing taxes you get better at it, or TurboTax has became much better, or I just don’t care much about them anymore that I don’t triple check everything. I think it is the combination of those three.

I’m jealous of two friends (Eva Noyola and Natalia Uribe) who are going to Portishead concerts in London and Munich. So far I haven’t seen anything about them coming to the US.

Life is good…

I have seen better Molotov concerts in Austin, but none the less this one at ‘La Zona Rosa’ was really good too. They played many songs from the first album specially the ones with XXX lyrics. They also did some jamming and played snippets from a few covers like Eye of the tiger (survivor), Smells like teen spirit (nirvana), Enter Sadman (metallica) and Higher ground (rhcp stevie wonder).

The president of the colombian political party Polo Democrático Carlos Gaviria was one of the speakers invited to the XXVIII Annual ILASSA Student Conference. His speech was basically a critique of the current government because it claims that Colombia has a strong democracy while he considers that many aspects of Colombia’s situation (like the high percentage of poverty) are clear signals that Colombia doesn’t have a democracy but instead what he refers to as a sudo-democracy.

I think Colombia does have a democracy, but it has many flaws. As he recognizes, there is not a country in this planet with a perfect democracy and Colombia by no means is close to have that.

Even recognizing that Uribe has many flaws I sincerely think Colombia is better today than how it was 6 years ago. And after hearing Gaviria today, it gives you the impression that this is not the case and that Uribe is the devil itself following a master plan to be a dictator. I honestly believe that this is not the case, and I definitely don’t want Uribe to be reelected again.

Designed by JD

Chichipanguanorrea 3.0 staff wishes you love and joy during these holidays and an amazing new year 2008. This time we are very sorry we could not hire neither Ugly Santa nor Ugly Elf, but we put together this beautiful christmas tree to keep the holiday spirit alive and we hope you enjoy it (specially if you are a ‘millionaire‘, a ‘devil‘ or a ‘powerful‘).

I spent all day yesterday at the 2007 Challenge organized by First Lego League (FLL) organization which is a Robotics contest for kids using LEGO Mindstorms. The day was very fun and the team i was coaching, the Pond Springs Pioneers finished in 19th place out of 60th teams. But the best thing is that our team got a 2nd place in the ‘Teamwork’ award and we got a nice LEGO trophy.

KVUE news was covering the event and they said they were going to post pictures and videos later this week.