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The great life in Lisbon

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at February 12, 2008 in Lisboa. 1 Comment

It was great, only because they were there:

Balázs, Gonçalo, Monika, Anne Dumas, Ana Fabjan, Sascha, Jonathan, Joao Miguel Alves, Claire-Marie, Beatrice, Thore, Anja, Daniel, Alec, Rebecca, Kaja, Andej, Per Anders, Nicholas, Charles, David “La Frite” Fritz, Pauline Bamberger, Anne “La Blonde” Thiriet, Daphne, Mattia, Roberto, Anna Ferenecova, Lena, Alessandro and Zan

Many thanks to all of you for a wonderful time in Lisbon!
I miss you all, and I hope to see you soon, somewhere

PS: download the original size for printing.

Back home in Belgium

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andrew

at February 12, 2008 in Lisboa. 0 Comments

The adventure is over. I am back home, since 30 January. More than a week has passed since than. I meant to write this sooner, but it’s been quite busy.

So that i will never forget, here is what I did on my last week of erasmus:
mon: (back from Porto) caipirinha + beatrix bar
tue: caipirinha + minimercado
wed: beach (sao pedro) + nood (clair’s dinner) + caipirinha + shotbar
thu: new erasmus party at XannaX (crap) + bedroom
fri: bedroom + didn’t get in on BBC guestlist
sat: met lots of people in Bairro + last time in Lux
sun: chicken curry at the frenchies
mon: non-alcoholic evening at Noo Bai and yellow jazz bar
tue: beach (estoril) + monixken’s brithday dinner + chocolate fondue at Daphne’s + last minimercado

sunset at Estoril beach

Quite a week. And lots of fun.

A reminder of the best places (bars) in Lisbon:

Noo Bai (miradouro santa catarina) : chill bar with amazing view, gmaps
Instituto do vinho do porto: port wine tasting in a chill relaxing bar
Vou ao Camoes: aka “the caipirinha shop”, sells caipirinha’s for 2Eur
Maria Caxuxa: nice bar in Bairro
Bar sem nom: aka “the shot bar”, 12 shots for 12 euro’s, always good music
Yellow jazz bar: great tosta’s and good music
Bedroom: mini club in Bairro. Nice interior and good sound. Some times good house dj
Lux: the big club of the city. I am a big fan of the downstairs floor (mostly techno)

I discovered all of this, with these guys

Exams

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andrew

at January 13, 2008 in Lisboa. 0 Comments

I haven’t posted in a while so I’ll let you know how my exams are going. On 4 January I took the Product Innovation exam. This course was very interesting and well thought (by Luis Filipe Lages, a great teacher/professor) so studying for it wasn’t very hard. Being properly motivated can make such a difference. From our class of 15 students, nobody failed. Alec and me both finished with a superb 18/20 I highly recommend this course for anyone who is interested in innovation & entrepreneurship.

Next exam was on 7 January: Logistics & Supply Chain Management. We didn’t receive many classes as the professor was often not able to attend. Much of it we already learned in previous years. The exam wasn’t hard and the professor likes too give a lot of points. Didn’t learn much from this course.

Yesturday, 12 January, was the hardest exam. Damn. Analysis of Industry and Competition. There was a lot of micro economics involved with theoretical models to show how certain situations affect competition in a given Industry. The course was rather interesting but very theoretic. The professor (who looks a little like Fez from that 70s show) did a good job to keep it interesting. It’s really a shame that the exam was such a problem: WAY too little time to solve all questions, so you rush through most of the computations without taken much time to think. This not only makes it stressful and unpleasant, it also punishes students who want to tackle the questions thoroughly. Giving the students half an hour more (or reducing the number of questions) would have made it a lot less frustrating. 15 minutes after the exam most answers popped into my head, blaaargh, frustrating..

Tomorrow the last one.. Bluurgh, International Business. It might have been an interesting course if the professor wasn’t so lazy, sleepy, unenthusiastic and constantly leaving the classroom to smoke and drink coffee. On top of that she has such a boring voice and a blank stare. No, this really drains your motivation to put effort in this mildly interesting subject.

So I better get off and hit the books!

No Dakar :-(

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andrew

at January 5, 2008 in Lisboa and Photography. 2 Comments

Tomorrow was supposed to be a beautiful day in Lisbon: sunny, 17°C and the Paris-Dakar starting here. Unfortunately the Dakar organisers were forced to cancel the rally due to safety concerns in Mauritania.

Following several consultations with the French government and taking into account its firm recommendations, the organisers of the Dakar have taken the decision to cancel the 2008 edition of the rally
Amaury Sport Organisation

That really sucks, because I love to watch the rally every year. It’s a good break from studying during the exams and the landscapes they pass are so beautiful. (Some nice pictures from previous years)

Too bad we won’t see it this year. Most contestants however are still here in Lisbon with their cars and teams. When I came back from my first exam (which went well) I was surprised to see both Hummers of Robby Gordon and Ronn Bailey in the middle of Avenida, just outside the metro station. I took some pictures of both cars and their support trucks. The Tuareg of Hardy and Lecompte was also parked in front of the Novotel. Nice rides. It kinda sucks to see them here in the middle of the city in stead of in the desert sand.

Catching up on erasmus experiences

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andrew

at December 23, 2007 in Family, Lisboa and What's Cookin'?. 1 Comment

There are still a lot of things I wanted to blog about, but I didn’t have the time to do so. Here’s a quick summary of everything that has happened since then:

First there was Beatrice’s party at our apartment. It was her birthday and we invited a lot of people. I think about 50 in our apartment in total. It was really fun and later that evening there was a gala from the economics faculty of Nova university. (that’s were Alec and me are studying)

A week later there was a party in the apartment of some other erasmus people, but this really beat all records. I think about 200 people were there that night. Really amazing. An open area with stairs going from one side to the other. (I hope I can get a hold off some pictures) . 4 floors of party people. The name of the street of this apartment was “Rua de 1° Decembro” so they had to give a party there on the first of december. We met some belgian people who study in Ghent there.

On 6th december, we had a christmas party with the people living in my flat. We bought gifts for each other and had a 6 course dinner. Everyone had to cook a dish. Ana made guacamole, Monika made a lovely polish soup, Bali and Andy prepared an amazing slovakian dish, Anne served us a nice tartiflette, Alec and me stuffed everyone with cheese fondue and Lena finished everyone off with a delicious tiramisou. One thing did go wrong though: A full glass of white wine got spilled on my MacBook. (It was playing the music) . Luckily my MacBook survived after letting it dry for 3 days.

That week we had our final presentation for the product innovation course. The idea of João and me finished second out of 7 groups. (This is fine, don’t you think?). Alec’s idea finished first of course I can post the presentation if you want, it’s about rPACS: a system for transferring medical images (X-rays) to doctors.

That night we had a goodbye cheese fondue at our place. Most people are leaving to be home for the holidays , so it was a nice opportunity to get everybody together.

They day after the final 5 minute presentation I left back to belgium for the What’s Cookin’? website launch party. The pictures of the party are online on the new website. The place was packed, everyone had a great time and we had the chance to tell people about our next great gig: 1st February, we are organising a whicked what’s cookin’ party in the Vooruit in Ghent. You might want to keep on eye on the what’s cookin’ blog because I think Jan will announce the headliner soon.

I stayed in Belgium for a week. It was nice to see my family back. But damn, It’s cold in Belgium (-3°C). Last Thursday, we had kind of a christmas dinner with the family. Really nice. I enjoyed spending time with my brother, sister, Rossella and my parents, and playing with the Wii

So I got back to Lisbon yesterday. I came home to an empty apartment Luckily the Dutch girls Daphne and Claire are staying here for the holidays, so I wasn’t completely alone. And Nathalie is coming tomorrow to spend christmas here. That will be nice Argh crap, I should be studying now for the exams coming up in 2 weeks.

So, I hope I brought you guys back up to speed on what’s been happening here.

Working weeks

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andrew

at November 22, 2007 in Lisboa and Management & business. 0 Comments

The last 2 weeks I have been working really hard on my Product Innovation project. So naturally I’ve had little time to write a post.

I haven’t really told you about the project I am working on with my Portuguese colleague João. We are working on modernizing the distributing of medical x-ray photo’s. More specific, we are developing a software front-end for doctors to view x-ray pictures over the internet. If you think that this sounds complicated, you are right, that’s why it’s been taking a lot of time and effort

But we were able to convince the professor and most classmates with our presentation this monday. The presentation itself was rather boring and not well prepared (I spend way too much time programming the prototype) - but the demonstration of this prototype was more successful.

Only one big presentation left for this course, and it’s the most important one. On december 12th, each group has 5 minutes to give their pitch talk. This presentation is supposed to convince potential investors and venture capitalists to fund our great innovation idea. I found some great tips from Garr Reynolds on how to prepare and deliver a great presentation. On Guy Kawasaki’s blog (a director of a VC firm with an amazing career) i read about The Art of Innovation, The Top 10 lies of Entrepreneurs and his 10/20/30 rule of PowerPoint.

Besides all the work, I also had some fun Nathalie was here thursday till monday and we went to a goa party on friday. Good sound system, great dj’s and live’s, too much people and thus extremely hot and sweaty. Saturday we had a mustache party in our apartment as a homage to Carlos, our mustached landlord.

My parents were here to visit me from sunday till today. 3 diners with delicious food! Thanks l’homme père & la mama We also had lunch with a super friendly Portuguese colleague of my dad, Cpt. Carlos Mirpuri. Quite an experience. Too bad my parents had to leave so soon. The weather wasn’t good, and I feel that they didn’t get a proper view of my life here in Lisbon. Sorry guys that I was so busy with university projects..