After one month, I’m back from London. I really enjoied this one-full-month vacation, because I didn’t worked there at all. Basically I were going out and clubbing every night. Lot of wonderful bars and clubs. Also lot of quiet museum stuff and theatre.
But one of the best things in London summer are BBC promps: Jassons with the Bayeriche Rundfunks Orchestra playing Dvorak Strauss, Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky music. Gidon Kremer, Maxim Vengerov and Joshua Bell three of the top world violinist in 5 days!. Anne Sofie von Otter, Messiaen’s Turangalila Symphony, Gergiev conducting Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, Alfred Brendel last concert…
One litte storie example of my relation with Britishs: when I were in the Royal Albert Hall for a prom concert, I asked someone in the staff for the right queue:
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Me: “Is this que Arena queue”
Staff: Do you mean Arena? (Pronounced slowly as
)
Me: Oh, yes I’m very sorry but I am used to pronounce ancient greek and latin words in original pronounciation
The worst in London is coffee. They don’t know how to make coffee and all coffee shops are starbucks, costa and nero. Starbucks is the 5 adventages coffee:
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They don’t serve you, it’s self service
They put the coffee in bad paper glasses
The coffee itself is awful
They don’t allow you smoking
It’s stupidly expensive
Lot of book reading action: Pantaleon y las visitadoras by Mario Vargas Llosa (really, really great and funny), A man in full, Tom Wolfe (his second book after The bonfire of the vanities), Herodoto History. I also read a book that everyone is reading now (included those people not used to read) and everyone is saying that it’s exiting: The Da Vinci Code. But IMHO It’s boring, badly writen, with stupid and plain characters, predictable, incongrouent….
In the GNOME side, we are now in Beta 2, so I urgently relased gconf-editor and bug-buddy with two bugs fixed and lot of translation updates.