Raul's Story

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: