I was lucky to be in London again last week, just before the lunatics probably disrupted the city pulse for a few months. Last weekend, from Friday 1st to Sunday 3rd, Canonical held the first Edubuntu summit, in preparation for their first release next October. Mark invited quite a few people involved in the development and deployment of Free Software in educational environments, including, among others, known faces like pere and Knut from Skolelinux, Juan Conde from Guadalinex, Quim Gil from Interactors and others from the K12LTSP or Schooltool projects. There were also a few teachers from the UK, and mdz, ogra, JaneW and Mark from Ubuntu. My boss Silvia Caballer also attended and presented the background and future direction of LliureX, our own regional project.

Belén and I arrived at Stansted around 40 minutes late, which proved to be critical to not catch the last underground train and be forced to try the nightly bus service. At Oxford Street, we tried to get into a few of the possible routes, but the drivers kept telling us that one wouldn't take us to Earl's Court, and we waited for the next one, and the driver would tell us it was the other one we should take. After one and a half hours of bus ping pong, and when I was totally freezing in the street, we decided to pick a taxi and go to the hotel as soon as possible. After some wait, a car that didn't look like a taxi at all stopped nearby and offered to take us. I tried to negotiate the fare before getting in, but the driver said there was nothing to talk about: £25. I prefered that to the cold I was incubating.

After the sessions, we'd go out for a walk around the city. On Friday, Juan, Juanjo, Quim, Belén and I went to a Malasian restaurant Quim recommended and we had difficulties finishing our plates and for dessert, we had some cider in an old tavern near the restaurant. The next day, Belén and I met one of her friends in Notting Hill and had dinner in an Iraqi restaurant which had a dude with an organ playing such a loud music that it was difficult to talk across the table. On Sunday, as the summit ended early, Petter, Knut, Jane, Matt, Ogra and us went for a walk around the Thames and a nearby park, but the group kept losing members as their flight hour approached.

In the end, it was Belén, Matt and me, so we headed to the Soho to look for a cheap and good Chinese restaurant, where we had dinner quite early, as the plan was to go to bed early because we had to wake up very soon to catch a plane at 7AM. After fighting with the chopsticks, we went for a walk around the area, and tried to phone some of the Debian guys around London. We were unlucky, elmo and thom were away, and we didn't have Ross's number, so the three of us ended up in another tavern driving beers and cider. When I was starting to feel drunk, Matt had enough common sense to suggest we went back to our hotel. Too late: after packing up, we had two fantastic hours of sleep before the alarms went off. We picked a taxi at 5AM which dropped us at Stansted for only £65. WTF!

Exhausted, and again frozen by the plane's air conditioning, we were back in Valencia at 11 on Monday. Just a few days later we learned about the horror in some of the stations we were around just the weekend before. What a weird feeling.

I had this great plan to minimise the impact of jetlag for this trip to Australia. Anyone at UDU will read on my face that it didn't work out that well...

I, partially on purpose, partially because the night got a bit more complicated than what I planned, slept just four hours or so on Friday. This was cool, as it would help sleeping during the long flight.

But of course, the flight from València to Heathrow was 3 hours late, and completely fucked up my plan to take a nap while I waited for the Sydney plane. No worries, I had plenty of hours to sleep on board. That's not so easy. When I discovered the passenger sitting next to me also came from València, we started chatting and, after dinner, I tried to get some sleep, but was mostly unsuccessful.

After our stop in Singapore we faced our second night in just a few hours, and I wasn't sleepy at all. At 2:30AM I found myself still reading my book Quina lenta agonía... and could get 1h of sleep before breakfast time and landing.

The silly guys at the airport's customs service were kind enough to trigger a "passport alert" on me, scan my passport, search all my baggage and ask me questions about my possibly evil plans for my stay in .au. That made me waste one hour that I could have used having a short nap at the hotel, but no luck.

As soon as the conference started, Daniel Silverstone said I would be collapsing by 11. Well, it's past 12 but I can't say I'm being able to concentrate too much in the BOFs... running a BOF this evening with Carlos will be interesting in this condition... :)

Oh, to follow the trend on my movie choice of the night before, last night I saw Sandra Bullock's Miss Congeniality, which was decidedly worse than Blade Trinity. I wonder how people actually go to the cinema to watch this kind of stuff.

It's past 2AM and I'm sitting in an airplane on my way to Sydney. The monitor in front of me, besides a zillion different movies and TV shows, has a channel with a map that gives you information about your journey.

Along with not so useful stuff like "tail wind" or "outside temperature" (it's -40°C outside, so what?), there's a countdown of the time it'll take to arrive to Singapore, our first destination. Even if it already feels like I've been inside here for an eternity, I still have 9 hours to go, but I'm trying to stay up as much as possible in an attempt to fight jet lag a bit.

We're currently flying over the Black Sea, and soon we'll be over interesting places like Iraq. I wouldn't put money into this, but I'm pretty sure the map stuff is made using xplanet, or xplanet's maps, because the night shading is just exactly the same as what I used as my background years ago. The size of this airplane was quite a surprise. It appears to be quite big from the airport's terminal, but when I got in and saw how wide (and tall) it is I couldn't help a "woah" to myself.

As the goal is to kill time as fast as possible without wasting too much laptop battery (currently at 68%, 2h 14m remaining), I decided to watch the fist movie I could identify on the many channels. Soon enough I found a tatooed Wesley Snipes on channel 4, so I ended watching a total POS called "Blade Trinity" which got rid of 2 hours quite easily.

I still have battery to watch a full DVD, and I think that's what I'm going to do until 4AM CEST. I have with me Chocolat and another one by Woody Allen.

A few weeks ago I went on a ski trip to the Telemark area in Norway with Núria and Brande, and three other friends of Brande. Brande is my sister's boyfriend, and has been to this place a few times before, as the facility where we were staying is owned by a hundred Danish families, including his.

The night before leaving, I decided it would be great if I got the flu and travelled with a bit of fever, and so I did. We three from València went to Madrid, carrying two big backpacks each with tons of weight, on Friday 25th to spend the night before flying to Oslo, as our flight was at 6:20. We stayed at Diego's place, in La Latina neighbourhood. In the morning, the four of us took our plane to Amsterdam and then another one to Oslo.

In Oslo, we tried to use the three hours we had between our arrival and the departure of our bus to wander around as optimally as possible, and visited the main streets, the Royal Palace and the harbour, while we carried, by turns, Brande's skis, as he had gone to look for Norwegian yoghourt and milk for our breakfasts.

Just a bit before taking the bus to Rjukan we met the last two members of our expedition: Alfredo, another friend of Brande, and her girlfriend Patricia. The four hours of bus to Rjukan were horrible for me because there was no way of sleeping due to the fever and I was terribly tired because we had woken up at 3:30 that day. Once on our destination, a pair of taxis took us to the Kvitåvatn Fjellstoge, where we would live that week.

This place is something like a small ski centre, surrounded by lakes and many kilometres of tracks to practice telemark ski. They have a main building with common areas for guests and many rooms for up to seven people. Outside, they have a set of typical huts, and we were lucky to stay on one.

These are old huts that were once in the middle of nowhere and were bought by the Kvitåvtn people, took them piece by piece and recontructed them at this spot. Our hut had two floors, with a table, a sink and little more at ground level, and four matresses and a few wooden racks for clothes in the first floor. The kitchen, bathroom and sauna were in other huts and were common for everyone.

If you want to cut some expenses, you can choose to carry your own bed sheets, food and clean up the hut yourself, and that's what we did. Brande organised three teams of two to manage cooking. Alfredo and Patricia took care of the small lunches and picnics to have during our ski routes, and the last dinner; Diego and Brande took care of breakfasts and two dinners; and Núria and I took care of the remaining four dinners. Núria and I planned to cook two different kinds of spaguetti, rice and lentils, with salad for all days. We also contributed our share of wine and a bottle of mistela.

We carried everything in our bags, making them very heavy, and we were glad to drop them on the floor as soon as we arrived. Brande took care of contacting the Fjellstoge people and getting our keys. We thought we'd have to sleep in the normal rooms, but it seems there was some cancellation and they were able to give us one hut for the first night, and two for the rest of the week, so Alfredo and Patricia moved after the first day.

The first morning was a bit rough. After visiting Trevor in the ski hut, who equipped us with all the necessary material, our first skiing lesson started. Brande has been skiing all his life, and was our teacher. Alfredo was lucky to have done it just two years before in these same tracks, but for the rest of us, we were about to start a long day.

While Brande went to buy some wax, the novice skiers jumped on their skis and started experimenting. Of course, with no wax, this was a bit dangerous, and mostly all of us bit the snow after just a few minutes. With the wax in place, and the very basic lesson learned, we tried to go down the first slope. I fell like 4 times in 15 metres, which was a bit discouraging; and this continued on and on during the first slopes. I told Brande I felt my feet were a bit loose inside my boot, and we tried to make a very tight knot on the boot, which helped somewhat, but I still felt a bit uncontrolled. For example, when I tried to stop, it was my boot what touched the snow, not the edge of the ski, and eventually that would make me fall down.

When there terrain wasn't steep, though, I adapted easily and could lead the group, as it was a not too tiring exercise, but plains weren't very common in the first day's newbie track. After crossing the ice lake, we reached a hill which we had to climb (no problems so far) and then descend skiing. A few more bad crashes and quite some harm in my butt made me stop being so brave and get rid of the skis for the most difficult slopes. In the end, after the first day, all my courage was replaced with bruises and a nasty pain in one of my ankles, which fortunately went away the next day. My confidence in being able to do it more or less ok was gone, though, as I had been the one in the group who had fallen most, and that was quite unexpected to me.

After dinner, our first sauna session and a good sleep, we were ready for our second day, which would take us through a much more interesting and tricky course. I went to Trevor's to see if he thought my boots were to big, and they were. When I told him about my boot touching the snow, he said... "you realise there's a ski for the right foot and another for the left foot, right?" Well, no, nobody had told me, and the mark on the ski was impossible to see if you didn't look very closely.

Wow, correctly sized boots and skis on the right side did make a difference. Despite the track being a lot harder, I fell a lot less and after a few slopes my fear to slide down started to go away. We skied all day long around the course, which offered great views of Rjukan's valley and the Gausta, and arrived back in Gaustablikk just in time for sauna, late dinner and some card game.

On Wednesday, Núria and I decided to go down to the town to see what was it like, and the rest went to do a long course. We discovered Rjukan is only two long streets, and there were sales everywhere. Shops were selling winter stuff like frenzy, with up to 90% discounts. We couldn't resist buying some clothes, but after visiting all the shops it was way too early to go back to the mountains, so we went to the public swimming pool.

This place was awesome. There was a big swimming pool, jacuzzis, sauna, vapour sauna and other stuff, and we spent three hours inside the water relaxing, with the white mountains behind us.

Day four started with some bad weather for the first time in the week. We went to do the 21km track, but going behind Gausta first. We had to wear all our equipment against the cold, including caps, because there was some wind and snow, and when you stopped to drink or wait for others, you would quickly get a bit cold. When we had done 1/3 of the course, we decided to go back because a few were a bit tired. The track went upwards for the most part, and the snow didn't make it easier. Nothing some more sauna couldn't repair.

This was my first time in a place with a real sauna, and I really enjoyed it. It was unthinkable for Spain that men and women would share a small space like that naked, but here it was, apparently, very normal. In Spain, I think even a non-mixed sauna only with naked men would be generally pretty empty. At first I thought I was going to melt and die in such a hot environment, but a few minutes after going out you could feel how relaxing it was. I would normally do three or four cycles of 10 minutes inside and 2 minutes outside under a cold shower (and with cold, I mean cold water is freezing in the Telemark).

We shared the big kitchen with a Danish group that were doing a survival training course, and Brande would sometimes try to overhear what they were talking about, and would later tell their mad plans to us. For example, in a few days they would leave the Fjellstoge and go sleep in the mountain during a week, excavating holes in the snow to get warm during nights. Oww!

As ski days passed, our bodies accumulated more and more bruises and painful spots. After more or less repeating the course of the second day, which was beautiful as it went through a dense forest, on Friday we had our last opportunity to ski in the Gausta area. In the previous days, I had been getting a pain in my leg due to, say, opening them too much when going down difficult slopes, and on the last day the pain was big enough that I didn't mind going back to something easy to test myself. Núria and I decided to repeat the newbie track of our first day, to complete it perfectly and go back to València knowing that we had at least learned a bit of skiing. And so we did: we started skiing, and until we crossed the lake we did very well and fast.

When we got to the same hill that caused us so many problems, I tried going down the slope, which included a bad bend on a fast area, and sensing I was a bit out of control, decided to do an emergency landing with my hip. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to put on my gloves and roll down my long sleeves, and the snow and ice bruised my hand and arm enough to draw blood on a few spots. Also, the impact on my wrist was quite tough and it ached quite a bit. That was good enough to remind us that we were still simple beginners.

Little more was left to do but pack, cleanup the hut as much as we could, and have our last dinner. Núria and brought the exact quantity of food we needed: we weren't short at all, and nothing remained either, which was pretty cool, because our bags were sensibly lighter on our way back.

I chatted a long while with Brande in the bus, while Diego made friends with a Norwegian girl who sat next to him. We had some spare hours at the city, and we used them visiting a second-hand market under a bridge near the Oslo canal, and we went up the canal for a while to see parts of the city. We even found what seemed to be a very nice squat in the centre! We finally left for the airport, and quite a few hours later we were back in Madrid. On Sunday morning, the Valencians went back in train, leaving behind the other three. Luckily for us, Monday was a local holiday in València so we had time to land and get back to real life, without sauna or a white paradise around us.

I think I have already decided where I will go next year in Fallas or Easter...

Brande, Núria and I just arrived a few hours ago to València, after leaving Rjukan at 6AM on Saturday and spending nearly 24 hours travelling back home.

Our week at the Kvitåvatn Fjellstoge in Norway has been, without doubt, one of my best vacations ever. Not only for discovering cross-country skiing, but because I've managed to disconnect from the daily stress and worries almost completely for eight days. Waking up every day near Brande, Núria and my new friends Alfredo, Patricia and Diego, with the Gausta peak saying "good morning" outside our window was just priceless.

I'll have to write a long blog entry soon or I'll forget many cool details, but not now as I'm pretty exhausted from travelling. We'll post the more or less 300 pictures somewhere soon, too.

I'm currently on a plane returning from London to València, after my stay with the Canonical/Rosetta guys. It's the first time I travel with my own laptop, and one that isn't either slow or unstable as hell. Being alone for the return flight, I decided to take out the lappy instead of my book because I'm too sleepy to get something out from the novel I'm currently reading, the latest book by Ferran Torrent La vida en l'abisme.

Situations like this make me think buying the powerbook was a good idea, as right now I'm using this dead time catching up with some e-mails I had to write weeks, in some cases months, ago, and doing some blogging about stuff from the last four days (as you've noticed already. :)

What still sucks about planes is when the whole cabin stinks with horrible plane food. It's even worse when companies like Iberia don't give you any food and you're hungry...

As I write this, we're crossing over the Pyrenees, my favourite mountain range, and just as the constant sea of clouds has disappeared, allowing me to enjoy the air view of a new sea of white mountains. Apparently it's been cold in Spain again while we were out. This happened just as the sun was setting in the West. Too bad I don't own a camera yet.

Now, back to reality: the final sprint at work before our Free Software Congress, and a lot of work to do still...

I'm all lost in the supermarket
I can no longer shop happily
I came in here for that special offer
A guaranteed personality

So Mark took us to a EAT SOUP place for lunch today, and there was no toilet. The perfect excuse to cross the street and go into Harrods and see if it's as shitty as daf said the day before.

I expected Harrods to be something similar to the Spanish El Corte Inglés, but I was totally surprised by what I found out. The first area I was in when I entered the huge building was the "Luxury articles" department, full of jewels and stinking parfumes. I kept walking towards the inside, randomly looking for a toilet. Not finding one too easily in the first floor, I took a tiny staircase and started going up and up. As I visited more floors, I realised the organisation of the shop is quite chaotic. You could find the carpet department just next to the pianos, which was a huge area filled up with pianos and people trying them. I also found modern and classic furniture, electronics and other random departments here and there, but the toilet was nowhere to be found, despite some of the exits did have indications for nearby toilets.

In the 4th floor, though, I picked up a good trail. The Luxury Washrooms were clearly what I needed. A few minutes later, the luxury washrooms were nowhere to be seen. Eventually I thought I had mixed things up, and that what I had seen was an indication to the "luxury washroom items" department or whatever, but suddenly, there it was: Men's Luxury Washroom.

As I had taken more than five minutes to find the place, I guess I was in a hurry because the rest would be about to leave EAT. I approached the entrance, and was puzzled by a guy sitting on a chair nearby rushing to open the door for me. Suspicious. I quickly went in, while I thought that having a dude that opens your toilet door most probably meant giving tips when you exit. Well, I didn't have a single coin with me, so that would be a problem. I had a glance at the place, and there was nothing luxurious at all in the toilet. I really wonder what makes it luxurious, besides someone opening the door for you...

Seconds later, the guy was behind me, with a "dude, you owe me something" look in his face. Carlos came to the rescue in that precise moment, when he phoned to ask me where the hell was I. When the phone started ringing, I said "oh fuck", trying to sound worried, and rushed out again, not having completed my mission.

In short, Harrods sucks, daf already told me. The decoration is horrendous, and it seems they try to give this impression of expensive store, while much of the stuff they sell is crappy or average anyway. The Egyptian Staircase was the worst of all, totally out of place. Now I know there's an equally horrible fountain dedicated to Lady Diana and Dodi. Too bad I couldn't find that bit in the maze...

Second full day in London. Too bad we couldn't go to the Speaker's corner, as we had to be at Mark's place early. After a more or less ok morning (Matt will argue about this, as his laptop decided it was time to start dying, and now resets every 15 minutes or so), we went for lunch to an Italian pub/restaurant nearby, called Papparazzi. Despite the horrible name, the food was good. Of course, and for the nth time since we arrived, we discovered that the two guys sitting right next to us were Spanish as well, when one of them made a remark about sucking cocks. The waitress at the hotel's restaurant is also Spanish and is called Rocío, I totally caught her when I asked for some "té" instead of tea. She thought she hadn't understood my English and said "Sorry?". :)

Work ended a bit later today, and at 19:30 or so we were out to decide where to have lunch. Daf guided us to a Thai restaurant nearby and despite my #1 priority being avoiding spicy and hot food, I ended up breathing like a dragon, and wondering if my lately weakened stomach would permit an aggression like that. After having dinner and confirming that it's impossible to make it under £10 in the area, we made our way to the hotel, going past Harrods and a Zara shop.

I don't think daf took us to a really interesting place today, but here's one of the nice places we saw yesterday, the 99 step staircase.

According to him, it's the best staircase in the planet. It's a long, steep spiral in one of the Underground stations, and could be used as a cool scenario for a 3D shooter game like Half-Life. If you trip over and fall down, you're in trouble though, because I don't expect you to stop rolling down until the end, and that must be a nasty fall.

At daf's and Matt's room, they were watching a humour show on TV while I answered to a few mails, and then we had a short talk about usability and GNOME, just before I went back to my room to write this blog entry and prepare to sleep. It's getting late already. Mako, you'll probably enjoy my next story, but I need to take a picture before I can publish it.

Yesterday, Carlos and I flew to London, where Mark is hosting a mini-meeting to talk about Rosetta stuff. After spending the day at his appartment, Daf, Carlos and I went to have a walk around the city centre.

We visited a few streets that are full of bookstores, as I'm supossed to buy The Little Prince in Welsh and Gaelic for a friend. It's been impossible to find it, so I might knock at Amazon UK's door and be done with it. After the bookstores, we went into the Chinese area and had dinner at a restaurant. I had a "few" problems with the chop sticks and I took ages to finish my bowl.

Being all tired, we decided that it was enough and went back to our hotel, ignoring the fact that the rest of the city was getting drunk already and didn't go into a club for a little while.

Bedtime now, as we have a long day ahead tomorrow. I'm looking forward to meet Scott again on Monday, as he's apparently coming to Mark's place too during the week.

I just bought tickets to go to Norway at the end of next month. It's taken a while to make up my mind, but thankfully Brande was persuasive and kept insisting that I should come. I'm sure I won't regret.

Brande is my sister's boyfriend, and has British/Danish double nationality. For some reason, his Danish family owns a part of a hotel in Telemarken, so he can book rooms for a totally ridiculous price for Spain, which is like 10+ times cheaper than the normal price in Norway, apparently.

The plan is to go there, three of us at the moment, and do some skiing, climbing the hills all over the place for one week. I fear the low temperatures, despite we'll go at the end of March. I'm simply not made for the cold. The other day Brande showed me a few pics of his other ski trips to Telemarken and it looks like we'll have a great time.

Oh, and then, there's the crazy sauna thing. I hear that there's this tradition of going into the sauna after your long ski day, and after you've been inside that hell for a while, you go out naked and lay on the snow for as much time as you can. That can't be good for my health.

I'm looking forward to my longest trip (in distance) ever. The farthest place I had visited before was London/Oxford, so imagine.