That’s a wrap… I hope

Final reports have been delivered. I hope there’s nothing more we should do. Figures are not that good as they were once, but given the circumstances, they are OK. That’s all for my part, I am calling this a wrap…

At last…

The promises had been kept. I received all the confirmations I needed, and more. I struggled until the very end but I did it again. I am proud, why not say it? I won’t be modest about it. I knew deep down that good things would happen to me, as always…

The worst Q end ever

Today is the last day, the day when all promises fail to accomplish. I don’t want to classify certain persons that promise everyday a response and when it comes the final hour, disappear. I’ve tried everything. It’s up to them now… Nevertheless I cannot escape a feeling of frustration… I hope it will soon pass…

Pep Guardiola, el hombre del día, “El Emperador”

Pep Guardiola es la verdadera estrella del Barça. El técnico culé ha sido el artífice del éxito azulgrana en una temporada gloriosa en la que como muy bien ha dicho “más no se puede hacer”.

En su primera temporada como entrenador ha conseguido ganar un triplete histórico: la Champions League, la Liga Española y la Copa del Rey, convirtiendo al Fútbol Club Barcelona en el primer equipo español de la historia en conseguirlo. También ha batido el récord de puntos conseguido por un equipo desde que las victorias tienen un valor de tres puntos y ha igualado el registro goleador del Real Madrid de Di Stéfano. También hay que destacar que han sido varios los partidos en que el FC Barcelona de Pep Guardiola ha goleado por 5 o más goles a sus rivales, destacando el histórico 2-6 contra el Real Madrid en el Santiago Bernabéu, una goleada que el equipo blanco no encajaba en 50 años en su propio feudo.
Ayer, 27 de mayo de 2009, en Roma, gana la final de la Champions League por 2-0 ante Manchester United. De esta forma FC Barcelona logra su tercer copa en la Liga de Campeones y Guardiola con 38 años logra un gran título para su carrera como técnico.

El entrenador del Barça es un hombre íntegro, meticuloso, muy serio en su trabajo y humilde. Guardiola ha asegurado que, pese a que no cree que sea el mejor Barça de la historia, sí es “la mejor temporada de la historia”.

Another earthquake

It seems I am the only one among the people I know to feel the earthquake that occured this morning. I felt it because I was in bed and not asleep. It was a two second movement. Anyway, I’ve asked everybody and they looked at me oddly. I watched the news in the morning and I thought I was crazy. But later came the confirmation. It was earthquake… a month and two days later…

Industries That Are Still Making Money in Recession

Auto Repairs, Home Repairs

Instead of buying new cars or upgrading to bigger homes, people are spending money on maintaining what they already own.

Supermarkets

Many consumers are looking to save money by eating at home more than eating out.

Dentists’ Delight

Health care has been one of the most recession-resistant sectors, since people regard it as a necessity.

Looking Good

Personal care extends to looking good through the recession.

Another Romanian winner at Cannes

After a 20-film run, Festival de Cannes’ Un Certain Regard program wrapped Saturday night with Corneliu Porumboiu’s “Police, Adjective” taking the top jury prize.

The Un Certain Regard Jury was presided over by Paolo Sorrentino, who joined Julie Gayet, Uma da Cunha, Marit Kapla and Piers Handling to pick the winners. Un Certain Regard 2009 featured 20 films from 24 directors hailing from 20 different countries, and included two first films.

“No festival worth its salt will want to miss Corneliu Porumboiu’s follow-up to the Cannes Camera D’Or-winning ‘12:08 East of Bucharest’ (2006),” writes Dan Fainaru in Screen. “Not only does his new film, set for Un Certain Regard this year, confirm the promise of his debut, but it goes one step further in its sober attempt to achieve the maximum with the minimum of means.”

“No one-hit wonder, Porumboiu confirms the promise of both the new Romanian cinema and his own status as a burgeoning world-class auteur,” writes Anthony Kaufman for indieWIRE. “It’s the capricious nature of law, along with the fickle ways of language and meaning, that’s really at issue in ‘Police, Adjective’ – as the film’s title suggests, i.e. from Websters: ‘Police (adjective) police power, police corruption, police state.’”

“The small-town police are hot on the heels of a high-schooler who shares a joint of hash with his friends before school,” explains Deborah Young in the Hollywood Reporter. “For the law, he’s a pusher. Following the case is young detective Cristi (Dragos Bucur), who has the uncompromising stubbornness of a hard-boiled hero, if none of the glamour…. Nothing, however, really develops in the film’s hyper-realist world. Instead of uncovering a big drug ring, Cristi argues with his wife about misspelled words, and here lies the crux of the matter. The Romanian Academy decrees word spelling with the force of law. But what is the meaning of Law? Police? Consciousness? Does moral law exist?”

“Further proof of the strength of the Romanian New Wave, this deadpan meditation on authority and moral conscience is playing out of the main competition, despite being one of the finest films at this year’s festival,” writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times.

Corneliu Porumboiu is the son of well-known football referee Adrian Porumboiu.

Monaco Grand Prix-F1

This is the only F1 Grand Prix I like to watch. Unfortunately, today I didn’t.
Brawn GP’s Jenson Button won today, capturing his fifth victory in six races to extend his Formula One championship lead.
Despite being near the Cannes Film Festival, few celebrities were spotted at the race. Star Wars director George Lucas and former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell were among the 100,000 fans.

Run since 1929, it is widely considered to be one of the most important and prestigious automobile races in the world alongside the Indianapolis 500 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans (with which it forms the Triple Crown of Motorsport). The history, spectacle and glamour result in the race being considered “the jewel of the Formula One crown”.
The race is held on a narrow course laid out in the streets of Monaco, with many elevation changes and tight corners as well as a tunnel, making it one of the most demanding tracks in Formula One. In spite of the relatively low average speeds, it is a dangerous place to race.

Estopa, la imagen del Barça de Pep

Estos días, Barcelona está de celebraciones y para mi la imagen del día de ayer fue la siguiente…

El miércoles hubo una de esas cenas-fiesta. Aunque poco, o nada, tuvo que ver con lo que nos tenían acostumbrados. El soplo se produjo. La prensa acudió a la puerta. Los ‘paparazzi’ también. Los futbolistas fueron llegando. Algunos solos y otros acompañados (de sus novias o de sus esposas). Y en vez de petardas con ganas de subirse a norias televisivas, aparecieron por allí los Estopa, de la mano del mismísimo Pep Guardiola. Los hermanos Muñoz, el dúo de Cornellà, con el hermano Pep, el solista de Santpedor.

No está confirmado, pero no sería nada extraño que ambos se soltaran con una de sus canciones para motivar aún más al personal para que conquisten su tercer título de esta temporada.

Si Guardiola quería dar ejemplo de trabajo y humildad, no se podía rodear de gente mejor. El David y el Jose, con sus tejanos gastados, sus camisas por fuera del pantalón y sus cuellos desabrochados, su cazadora en una mano y su cigarrillo en la otra. Buena gente. Gente normal, aunque el éxito les persiga desde hace diez años.

Guardiola da la impresión que hace pocas cosas por casualidad.

Pero, con o sin premeditación, la foto que el jueves apareció en la portada de tres periódicos catalanes contagiaba buen rollo, optimismo, un “Viva la vida” a ritmo de rumba. La mejor imagen para resumir el espíritu de la nueva época? Los tiempos están cambiando. O ya han cambiado.

Miami, FL

Far and away the most exciting city in Florida, MIAMI is a stunning and often intoxicatingly beautiful place. Awash with sunlight-intensified natural colors, there are moments – when the neon-flashed South Beach skyline glows in the warm night and the palm trees sway in the breeze – when a better-looking city is hard to imagine. Even so, people, not climate or landscape, are what make Miami unique. Half of the two million population is Hispanic, the vast majority Cubans. Spanish is the predominant language almost everywhere – in many places it’s the only language you’ll hear, and you’ll be expected to speak at least a few words – and news from Havana, Caracas or Managua frequently gets more attention than the latest word from Washington, DC.

Just a century ago Miami was a swampy outpost of mosquito-tormented settlers. The arrival of the railroad in 1896 gave the city its first fixed land-link with the rest of the continent, and cleared the way for the Twenties property boom. In the Fifties, Miami Beach became a celebrity-filled resort area, just as thousands of Cubans fleeing the regime of Fidel Castro began arriving in mainland Miami. The Sixties and Seventies brought decline, and Miami’s reputation in the Eighties as the vice capital of the USA was at least partly deserved. As the cop show Miami Vice so glamorously underlined, drug smuggling was endemic; as well, in 1980 the city had the highest murder rate in America. Since then, though, much has changed for two very different reasons. First, the gentrification of South Beach helped make tourism the lifeblood of the local economy again in the early Nineties. Second, the city’s determined wooing of Latin America brought rapid investment, both domestic and international: many US corporations run their South American operations from Miami and certain neighborhoods, such as Key Biscayne, are now home to thriving communities of expat Peruvians, Colombians and Venezuelans.