I know I should've posted earlier, but I just keep forgetting. Thanks, Jim, for reminding me of it. The last couple of months have been a lot of fun, as usual. On our Thanksgiving break, I went to London. I stayed for about 5 days. There I met Anja, who lives there, and Sonia, who flew from Spain to meet me and other friends of hers. I also visited Oxford for a little bit, and thought it was a pretty little town. I was surprised by how formal English people are in their clothers. Very different than other parts of Europe like France and Spain and certainly very different than California! In London I went to all the typical stuff: Picadilly Circus, British Museum, Buckingham Palace, Westminster, etc. I also went to a footy game to Uptown Park to see West Ham play. I wasn't too impressed with the team, except for Carlos Tevez who played an exceptional game. Surprisingly, though, he got taken out in the second half. I had the impression some of his teammates didn't want to pass him the ball. Anyway, the style of play they had was very conservative. But overall the trip was tiring, but a lot of fun. I would've loved to see the Killers on concert there (they played half a mile away from Anja's flat), but it was still a great trip. Thanks to Anja and Sonia :)

 

Back in Cali, we had the Microsoft holiday party. That was a loooot of fun. I invited Jorgelina to come with me, and after picking her up late and registering at the hotel, we were about an hour late =/. The party was from 7 to 11, and we were going to be there around 8. Except that I made a wrong turn and got into the Bay Bridge to Oakloand. The sign doesn't say you're going East until you're in the bridge!!!!!! Why didn't I get off in Treasure Island? Because we were talking and missed the exit. It ended taking us about an hout to get back from the bridge, and arrived at the party at 9. But that was a fun party, I wish we had one every season hehe. Then we went to some bar called Mr Smiths or something like that. At the end of the night, we were very tired.

 

Now I'm back in Monterrey for the holidays, and having a great time. It's great to see all of my family. The more time I spend away from them, the more I appreciate them. It's great to play with all my little cousins now that all of us were here. You can see the pics from the Christmas party at my grandparents' here.

Jim Roos gave me an ultimatum: If I don’t update my Space soon, he will remove his link to my Space from his. Everybody knows that’s the last thing I want, so I’ve decided to talk about the last month of October, a very busy month.

I first started with a very fun trip to my hometown of Monterrey, Mexico. There I worked from home for a week. Although there was a lot of work that week, I managed to meet a friend or family every day. It’s always great to go back home and meet everyone. I also got to meet my new cousin Norberto, a 4 month old baby the size of an 8 month old J.  The main reason I went to the trip was to be at one of my best friend's weding Cecy. She looked beautiful that day. I did have a problem about work though. The Internet connection at my home was not working one day, so I had to go to Microsoft Monterrey and work from there. Did you know that they have a dress code? Everybody there wears a suit and tie. I know you might be asking: “Did you go in shorts and flip-flops?” No, I actually asked if there was a dress code before and went with jeans, dress shirt, and shiny shoes.

As soon as I came back I had to take a business trip to Philly. That was a fun but tiring trip. We went to talk to Wharton/UPenn students about Windows Live Mail. Funny thing is that amongst those students was Homa, one of my work buddies from Appian.

After I came back from that trip two new friends arrived in town, Claudia and Laura. Claudia’s family has been friends with my family for a while. They came to stay with Claudia’s aunt who lives in San Jose. Since they got here we have gotten a lot great and have going out a lot together. We’ve been taking a lot of trips to San Francisco, and we also took one to Monterey, CA. We also went to Halloween to the Castro. It was crazy, and in the end unfortunately there as some violence in there. You can see some pictures here.

Anyway, I hope this is good enough for Jim not to get angry!

El dia de hoy Alina se trato de vengar de mi post por medio de su fotolog: http://www.fotolog.com/alina_rebeca

 

Desafortunadamente, borro mi espacio. Al parecer no toma muy bien las bromas, aunque eso es algo que critica de los ISEs :p Para fortuna de todos ustedes, podran leer mi comentario aca abajo:

 

"primero, checan rauldrdz.spaces.live.com. Alina esta tratando de vengarse de esto :D

como todos sabemos, alina tiene una graaaan fascinacion por los ises, mas le encanta hablar mal de ellos. pero por alguna razon no los puede dejar ir. tanto asi que le hemos declarado la mascota oficial de los ISEs.

ademas, si las ISIs tienen bigote, que culpa tenemos nosotros?????!!!!! Mejor aprendan a quitarselo de vez en cuando (con una vez al mes nos conformamos, en serio jajajaja)

en fin, bombis, gracias por pensar en nosotros!"

 

en el Internet exista la libertad de expresión!!!!!!!

Quería presentarles a todos ustedes a una muy buena amiga mía, Alina, mejor conocida como la Bombis. Alina viene de la hermosa ciudad de Monclohollywood del estado de Coahuila. Llegó a Monterrey para "estudiar" en el Tec de Monterrey la carrera de ISI. Entre las cosas que le gustan a Alina están ir de fiesta a los antros, dormir en el trabajo, dormir con los ojos abiertos, enojarse mucho por tonterías, pasar horas y horas escribiendo en su fotolog y sacar lo rancherita dentro de ella, aunque esta última por lo general solo se ve cuando anda un poco pasada de copas. Una de las fascinaciones de Alina son los Ingenieros en Sistemas Electrónicos (ISE). Por alguna razón siempre esta detrás de ellos, aunque no lo quiera admitir.

Si estás interesado en conocer a Alina deja un mensaje. Si eres un ISE las posibilidades de que te conteste aumentarán considerablemente.

One of the things I always criticized about Monterrey’s coach, Miguel Herrera, was on the lack of variety in his tactics. Although I’ve always thought he’s a great coach, I believe a team should always be changing their tactics during the game according to the situation. Monterrey had stopped doing that, and became predictable to the opposing team when they were in ultra-defensive mode.

 

Now, they presented a diamond 4-4-2, meaning one defensive midfielder, one attacking midfielder and 2 wingers. I loved the way how the offensive moved and played on first touch, a great example of pure football. Ochoa is all over the place, always moving. And with great distributors of the ball as Perez, Arellano, Gracian and Erviti, beautiful plays where happening all the time. But when Pachuca brought in more attacking midfielders, they changed to 2 defensive midfielders and 2 wingers. I think that the 4-4-2 formation is one of the most flexible ones. I believe their previous 5-3-2 tactic prevents that.

 

I’m encouraged by what I saw, and hope that means a better season :). I’ll have to say that the commentators on this game were horrible! They missed calling a lot of the players’ names, and since the quality of the feed was not that high, it was difficult seeing which player was which.

On my flight back from Redmond, I met a very interesting man. He said he was a pilot during WWII. One of the history areas I like more is WWII, so it was interesting talking to this man. He's the first WWII veteran I meet. He was the pilot of low altitude bombing planes. He bombed bridges, railways, roads, many of the strategic things. It was cool listening to all his stories. He seemed like a very smart person, and in one hour managed to tell me all his life story. He did say that even when he had a lot of work running his business, what he though was most important was his wife and kids. He said that without that, nothing else mattered.

It's finally here, a new soccer season. I consider it begins the moment the Mexican tournament starts. Hopefully, Monterrey will do great this season. They tied their first game, but they showed promise. Defense is still their main problem.

 

Anyway, last season was the first full soccer season living outside Mexico. Even so, this was my best year with regards to seeing live soccer matches:

 

Last weekend I returned to DC to see all my friends. We had an amazing time together, and it was fun staying in my previous house. Again, lots of memories when I came back, and it's always great to see my family away from home :)

 

Anyway, one of the best things is that I was finally able to play a sport again after my surgery. I hadn't been able to play anything since I injured my elbow in the World Cup. To those of you that know me, you know that I LOVE sports, and I need to play them often in order to blow off some steam. I start getting into a bad mood if I don't, I need to get my competitive side out! But since I hadn't played in a long time and I didn't even bring my cleats, I didn't do so well

 

Back here in CA, work has been crazy. But I like a lot what I do, so I don't mind that much. Hopefully all of my features will be complete by the time our milestone finishes, and I can tell you all about them. 

It’s been a long time since I’ve written, so I have many topics! I hadn’t had time to write because my family had been in town and I’ve had a TON of work.

 

First, the rest of my vacation. After the first Mexico game, I went to see the now champions Italy play vs Ghana. Although Italy played extremely well on the first half, they turned to their usual defensive style on the second half, and were lucky Ghana had a horrible shot accuracy. Lippi took Toti out to put in a defensive midfielder to stop the Ghana counter-attacks, but that ended Italy’s possession of the ball. It was disappointing considering how they had played the first half.

 

The next day I went to Berlin, where I played a pickup game of football. I was playing goalkeeper, and that’s when I got injures. Turns out 6 years ago when I was playing basketball in High School I fell on the court and landed on my elbow, and that caused a bone spur, an extra piece of bone that grows. While being goalkeeper, I landed on the elbow again and broke part of the spur. Ouch! I still played the rest of the game hehe

 

That evening I went to Leipzig to see the Spain vs Ukraine game the next day. I stayed at an apartment that belonged to German students who put their couch for rent in a web page. I couldn’t find a place to stay and decided to go with them, and it was great! I had a lot of fun with them and Gui and Cachu, my friends from college.

 

The Mexico vs Angola game was a huge party again. I had seen Italy play in the say city, Hannover, but this was much, much bigger. There were people everywhere, and again, El Recodo was there. The best thing about those games was all the stupid things going around before and after the game. There were a lot of jokes, a lot of parties, and people doing things they wouldn’t do elsewhere. The game was a disaster, though. No more words are being wasted to talk about that game. Later I also met with some friends from high school, and we had a lot of fun hanging around town and in the train station. The train station looked like a hotel because so many people were there sleeping. But there was so much partying going around there, people shouting, playing football, and there was small beer kegs being sold there at the train station! I slept there for a couple of hours until a policeman and his dog woke me up (I know, pathetic, but it was funny haha) and there was still partying going on at 7 am. Then I left for Denmark.

 

Denmark was a lot of fun, I met with Anja, Line and her extremely cute baby, Sofie, which I hadn’t met yet. They are both great friends, and I was dying to see them. Denmark is a pretty small country, very quiet. And I loooved Copenhagen. It was very pretty, and the people are very friendly. I would love living there for a few years. Then I left for Oslo, where I met Janicke. We had dinner with her mom, and we had a great time there. Oslo reminded me a little bit to Vancouver, same scenery. What I was surpised of was the prices, everything’s ridiculously expensive! Then I ended the trip in nice, old Amsterdam, where I met Sonia. All I can say is, that town is fun. And they have great Argentinean restaurants, as well. Unfortunately, I ended the trip in a sad way with Mexico’s defeat in the 2^nd round.

 

Anyway, about the World Cup, I’m always sad when a team that doesn’t play well win. I think we saw another cup similar to Italy 1990, very defensive. Starting from the second round, every team was just frightful of making a mistake, even Argentina, which we all know for having an attractive game.

 

Now I’m recovering from surgery that was needed after my elbow injury. I’m getting veeeery bored being here all by myself without doing anything. They have my arm in a sort of cast, and every time I take my medicine I fill sick. Anyway, this will be over soon J

A couple of days ago I went to the match of Mexico vs Iran, and let me tell you it was amazing! Nobody parties like us Mexicans. The night before I was able to get a ticket, so I was reaaly excited about going to the game.

 

We woke up early in the morning and took the train from Stuttgart to Nuremberg, and it was already packed with noisy Mexicans who were drinking and chanting. The moment we got to the Nuremberg train station, hundreds of fans were there singing.

 

When we go to the stadium, it was the same scene: many Mexicans singing and drinking and joking around with the few Iran fans that were there. In there everybody was dancing in front of the TV cameras, putting on their own show. I saw Eugenio Derbez, Facundo and El Compayito hehe Then we went to a party sponsored by Televisa, one of the 2 largest TV network stations in Mexico. There, beer was flowing, and everybody was dancing and singing on top of benches, tables, or anywhere they could found a space. A German from Nuremberg said that before every game of the local team the fans gather there for a party, but he´d never seen anything close to that haha Then, at the party, came out "La Banda El Recodo" singing their most popular hits. I can´t belive I came all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to see them hahaha

 

Then I was off to the game. The stadium had a 45,000 to 50,000 capacity, I don´t remeber exactly, but most of the fans there were Mexican. You could see green EVERYWHERE: Then I got some goosebumps when we started singing the national anthem. Then came the three goals which we all celebrated in a big way.

 

Then the party in downtown Nuremberg started. That´s where all the 30,000 estimated Mexicans in Nuremberg went (although I think it was more around 40-50 thousand). I don´t think that town had seen so much action since the war. We partied till 4 am, singing, drinking, dancing. I saw many friends which I had no idea were there haha Obviously, the town was left a big mess, sadly. The funniest thing was watching some locals with a drum they had stolen. The drum belonged to the "Rebel" fan group from the Pumas football team. If you´re Mexican you´ll find that funny, too hehe The "Rebel" is considered the most agressive supporters club in the country.

 

I´d never seen anything like that, and I´m sure the Nuremberg people hadn´t, either. I went yesterday to a Italy game, and it came nowhere close to what happened in Nuremberg. I think we can earn the title of loudest fans in the world :) Now, I´ll go see the Spain vs Ukraine match, and on Friday, again to the Mexican party when we play Angola. 

May was another very fun month! The first weekend I went to DC to visit all my old friends (I lived there last year). We had an amazing time together. We went for dinner, had barbecues and drank lots of beer J. All in all, I felt like if I had never left there, like it was my home again. Thanks to everyone for such a good time! It was nice to see my family away from home again. I’ll be back again at the end of July, I just bought my ticket tonight (I had several reasons to go for, I’ll explain later hehe).

 

And a couple of weeks ago, Ana Gaby came to visit and we went to South California. We took advantage of the long weekend, and headed out on Friday to Santa Barbara. I worked from home all day and then headed out to downtown. The next day, we headed out to Hollywood to meet Mak and Mary, some old friends I met in New Zealand. Turns out Mary’s pregnant and their having the baby by the end of the year. You could tell how happy they are and they were completely in “parent mode” J We hung out in Hollywood, got to the classical stuff, but what I really liked is that I saw the set where they filmed Cheers, one of my favorite shows. Later on we headed to Downtown Disney and had dinner there, and finished partying at the bars in Hollywood.

 

The next day we went to Six Flags Magic Mountain, which turned out to be a huge mistake. The lines were horrible, and since the season was just opening, everything was soooooo sloooooow. In 9 hours, we only got into three rides. Even Panda Express ran out of freakin’ rice. Anyway, the last day we woke up very late and just headed out to the beach in Santa Barbara. It looked like it came out of a movie, the California beach, everybody drinking beer, playing music, playing games, it was a complete party beach.

 

I’ll post the pictures of both trips as soon as I come back from Europe. Which BTW, I’m leaving in 8 hours!!! I ended up also getting the ticket for Spain vs Ukraine, for a total of 3 matches. I’m really excited and can’t wait to be there. My friends that are already there say it’s starting to get fun. I’ll try to write from there once in a while.

 

Let’s see how this World Cup goes for Mexico, I have really high expectations. Vamos Mexico!

It finally happened, I was able to get a ticket for one of the Mexico matches in the World Cup: Mexico vs Angola. It is my patriotic duty to go support the team

 

I can't believe how lucky I was. My hands were shaking when I saw  the screen where it asked me for my username and password to buy the tickets. I can't even describe how happy I am!!!!!!

I finally got tickets for the World Cup!!!!! Italy vs Ghana, category 1, although obstructed view. Anyway, I'm still trying to get some tickets for the Mexico games, and I'm on the waiting list for 7 games in total, so I might go to one more game or two. My biggest concern was going all the way to Germany and not being able to see one single game. Fortunately, that won't be the case anymore

The last Friday of April, my buddy Zeek from work asked me: “What are you doing this weekend?”. “Nothing special.” I replied. “Want to hit the casinos in Tahoe?” And that’s how a very fun weekend started. Although there are a lot of hikes, ski lodges and water activities in Tahoe, we went directly to the South Lake Tahoe, where California meets Nevada, the best state in the US.

 

Zeek and I were staying at another hotel different than the rest since we didn’t really care. But there is a line of dignity and self respect we didn’t want to cross. As soon as we got to the hotel, we saw the hotel’s pool in a bright green with bottles of champagne and beer in it (photos included in photo section). That’s never a good sign. When we got to the room, it smelled like vomit. I also had déjà vu’s of my trip to Virginia Beach one year ago. Many of you know what that means. J We obviously didn’t stay there and stayed at Robin’s room, who had a suite with a couple of very nice couches.

 

Right after that, we hit the casinos. I had a lot of fun playing the roulette. Everyone seems to love craps, but I don’t get it yet. Maybe I need to buy “Craps for dummies”. All the time you play the waitresses keep bringing you alcohol for free, you only have to tip them. They do that so that when you’re drunk you start making stupid bets, as some people later found out (hehe). Later during the night we went back to the hotel and watched Dodgeball (ESPN 8 “The Ocho”) and played poker with Tecates. The next morning we went to the casinos again before we left.

 

It’s worth mentioning that I probably broke a record of most times being asked for an ID. Many of my out of North America friends(remember, Mexico is part of North America. Ever heard of NAFTA?) might not know that the legal age in the US is 21. EVERY time we went to a new table, got a new waitresses or hostess,  I got carded. They always said “It’s just that you look so young! But it’s a good thing when you get older”. I’ve heard this all my life. I was the only one in our group constantly carded.

 

Overall, it was an amazing weekend! Thanks to everyone that went!

This Lord of the Rings commercial has been in TBS, and I just think it's hilarious. It's something we all suspected, but could never confirm hehe Thanks to Ben Poon who gave me the link :)

 

I can't believe how frustrating it is to get tickets to the World Cup! The whole system is a mess! All day long there have been matched available, and when you click on them it takes you the the number of tickets page. Then you go into a HIP challenge, then to a waiting room. After you stay in the waiting room, the tickets you chose are gone!!!!! And then, three minutes later the tickets appear as available in the web page again!!!! Why?!!!!! Why are they doing this?!!!! Why release just a few tickets, then 5 min. later release a few more, then 3 min later more, etc. Why can't they release them all at once? Server capacity, you might say. Well, excuse me, but they should have thought about that sooner!!!!!! This is the worst ticket buying system I've ever seen, and it's really frustrating to be all day long clicking on the refresh button and applying for tickets. The WC organizers just didn't have a clue on what they were doing.

 

Even so, I'm still going to Germany and try to find tickets there. If not, then I'll just have to join the party outside the stadium :)

This was a week full of activity. I went to Santa Barbara last weekend for Marion's birthday. I had a great time with the family, and I'm looking forward to my next visit. It was a little bit cold, and there was even snow in the mountains. Most  of my drive to SB was during the night, so on my way back I was surprised of the amazing scenery going to San Jose. Leaving SB, you get to drive alongside the beach for a few miles. Then you start going through the mountains, and end up drving on a plain between them. This part of the trip is where most of my pictures are from. After putting gas into my car, I went into the hills to take pictures of some ranches with cows. This whole scenery reminded me a lot of New Zealand: green hills, mountains covered in snow, lots of cattle everywhere. I was so impressed I kept taking pictures while driving.

 

A couple of days later I flew to Seattle to go do training at the Redmond campus. Although it has its charm, I'd take California every day over Seattle. People there say that it's nice in the summertime, and I bet it is. But I'd much rather live in a place where's it's nice during the whole year. Cali is really one of the best places you can live in, at least in my opinion.

 

And now I'll completely change topic and mention that I've been working for MS for 7 weeks now. So far, it's been an amazing experience. They treat me great and I have a lot of fun. For those of you who are wondering what exactly do I do, I'm a Program Manager for Hotmail, and I'm in charge of dealing with partners and clients. I really love what I do, I like dealing with all of our partners and having to negotiate with them and all of the rest of the MSN groups. It leads to having sudden peaks of work and pressure, so you know one week will never be the same as the next one. You get to meet a lot of people across the company, too. And I can't complain about the traveling, too. I'll be visiting a lot of cool places I've never been to. I also get along great with my team, specially with my manager. I also moved to my new apartment in Palo Alto a few weeks ago, and I've been having a lot of fun going out with my roomates. It seems like I had known them for much longer. All in all, I'm really happy and hope this stays the same for a looong time.