Around (half of) the World with 732 Euros

Ok, finished. I have just booked the last flight for my trip to US. Total cost? 732 Euros. And all this being inflexible about the dates (I searched for exact dates), choosing decent departure time (after 10.45 am), choosing decent airlines (British Airways, American Airlines, Continental Airlines, United Airlines) and booking all the flights in less than a month in advance. A great help was the search engine Travelocity.com, which seems to be quite professional and cheaper when compared with other similar search engines I tried the last days.
Here is the break down of the prices and the routes that I will follow:

-> London-New York (377E round trip)
Departure this Saturday, 29th of March
-> New York - Houston (127E)
Friday, 4th of April
-> Houston - Austin - Los Angeles (54E+78E)
Monday, 7th of April
-> Los Angeles - New York (96E)
Saturday, 12th of April
-> New York - London
Wednesday, 16th of April

732 Euros is the amount of money that somebody earns working 45 hours in a simple job in London, such as a Receptionist in UCL's Language Center (hourly rate 16,21Euros with the current exchange rate Euros/Pounds). Which is one week's work plus 5 hours overtime :)
Not a UK resident? Come to London for a month - unless you are restricted by Visa issues - and find a job, it is so easy. Upload your CV in monster.co.uk and they will quickly contact you with a couple of job offers, specially fitted to your skills.

This makes me wonder, whether our 'life goals' and 'life dreams' like a trip to the other part of the Atlantic are so difficult to achieve, or they are just a state of mind. Why do we unconsciously put such kind of barriers to what we want to achieve? A first approach to the solution of this riddle will take place in The Book :o)

Oh, and for those critical thinkers who object by saying that a trip is not only the ticket fares but also the accommodation, please check the couchsurfing.org site. You stay for free and enjoy the company of a local, whom you have chosen according your preferences, by browsing the personal webpages of the couchsurfing community members :o)

Or maybe traveling to America is a long trip to a far away destination? Distance. Another mind concept. Los Angeles - New York are two cities 5 flying hours apart. This is less than the time needed to go from my city in Greece, Thessaloniki, to Athens by the normal speed train. 1oo years ago a long distance trip was to go from a village to the next one.

Or maybe the preventing reason was the lack of knowledge that this kind of trip is possible? Now you know it is possible. Do you want to do it? Probably yes. Will you do it? Probably no. Why?

So, the barrier is neither money, nor distance nor time nor ignorance; the barrier is called mind. But what's the real reason behind this reaction of our mind against our will? Maybe inertia? The fundamental property of the matter to resist to any attempt for change of its current state? Mind is also matter? What's happening around? What prevents us from flying? Am I getting crazy or is this a part of a starting-being-rational procedure for the first time after a long period of hypnosis?

Btw, all these remind me also of the Tag Heuer advertising campaign You can have a look of more nice campaign photos at the official Tag Heuer site

To be continued:)

Facebook Garage London

Last November my friends Michele and Vito started the implementation of an idea for an environmental community driven site: greenester.com (will soon be ready- hopefully:) Of course nobody knew it. Of course, we wanted to make it known. How? By exploiting the viral character of Facebook applications, a common practice lately:). So I became a Facebook developer. And last week I received an invitation to attend the Facebook Garage event in London.

Today I went there. It was hosted by Sun Microsystems. It started very good; with canapes food. Then came the pizzas. Then they opened the beers. And then came the belly dancers. I am joking, no belly dancers. Just a girl announcing the begining of the session.

Geeks like fun. So they started with a new anti-Facebook Anthem from YouTube (or YouTunes as we hear in one of the Obama Girl's videos:) After some not-so-interesting speeches, at least for me- we had a break. During it I was approach by a young woman, who showed interest in what I am doing and then asked for my email. No, she didn't want to date me, otherwise she would ask for my phone number, right? Right. I am in London, and I think this is called head hunting or something like that. I told her that I am writing a book, but she didn't seem to care much, because then she asked me if I know php:)

The second part was more interesting, dealing with some legal issues. The case study was the bad people from scrubulus application coping the scrabble game. Finally, the results of a poll application were shown, which was conducted online in real time during the event. "I think that Applications on the site are useful for" was the name of the application, and the winner was the option "nothing" with 54%. The message was clear: we, the developers, had to make useful applications. This was in harmony with the next speech about the Rambo Application. It was created for Sony pictures for the promotion of their movie. The interesting part was an analysis of the 'success' parameters that make an application viral, which the wannabe developer can enjoy at the last picture.

After it finished I got one more free Becks and I went home.

PS Talking about viral spreading, it made me a great impression what happened yesterday after publishing the post on the breaking news about the arrival of the new Asus eee; the last 3 months I had 300 hits on my website. Between 10:00-12:00 yesterday they launched to more than 500 , and after 12:00 almost nothing. Maybe because then the CeBIT started, providing more up-to-date information about the eee. Any ideas?

It's here! (almost:)

Finally what I (and many more) was expecting: the 9 inch Asus eee. Today it will be officially announced in CeBIT in Germany. At first sight it seems more beautiful that its 7-inch predecessor and with enhanced specifications at a whooping price of 399 Euros. It comes with an 12 GB flash memory which is -as English people say- fair enough, as well a 1 GB RAM, and screen resolution 1024x600. Estimated date of arrival: mid 2008. More details will flow the internet during the next hours, when the CeBIT will open its doors; a good information resource is the engadget site, where I saw the happy news some minutes ago (I woke up this morning and I had a burning desire to search for any news related to the 9-inch eee release :)

PS Sorry, no girls in this post, but this thing is sexy per se ;o)

Obama Girl

The elections in the USA this time are not boring at all! They are getting even more funny and, thanks God, even hotter! On the right you can see the more influential supporter of America's first decent candidate resident of the White House after Michael Dukakis back in 1988. You can also enjoy one of the videos of the Super Obama Girl here; and another one, a Matrix Version, here. May the Force be with you! (referring to both:)

Live at least 55 seconds per day

Yes. And the DIY manual for the maximization of this time will soon be released :)
Btw, the video is nice!

eee

My prayers (and the prayers of many computer owners out there) were finally answered!

Some months ago the Asus eee was released. The first time I saw it was in the hands of a professor from Imperial College, during a project meeting at Cambridge back in December (ohhh what an honor- btw he was one of the professors who I contacted while searching for a PhD position in 2006, and he didn't even reply to my email; but he is cool and funny anyway:) This guy was excited about his new gadget, and my friend and flatmate, Michele, shared his excitement, wanting to buy one for himself also; but I told him it is too small and he would ruin his eyes (...). Then I saw it again at PC World near my university. In January I had a clearer mind; 7 inch laptop at the astonishing price of $299! the catch: no optical disk drive and a flash memory instead of hard disk drive, which constrains the memory to 2GB (also available in 4GB and 8GB for a bit higher price). This is bad, right? No! It's great news! this means that I can play squash with this machine without it getting hurt (ok, regarded I am not veeery cruel with it:) Moreover, I can also plug my new baby from Western Digital, which so far rocks; 250GB in your palm for just £80, and prices are dropping.

I will wait for the new model of 9 inch eee to be released with the 8GB memory, since I can still have my MacBookPro 3GH till April. Btw it is still alive, but for some reason I feel that I will return it to the University in a semi-dead semi-alive state, just like the Schroedinger's cat.

Soap Operas?

Some minutes ago I was happy to learn where the name "soap opera" comes. I will explain.

The last days I fell in love with Audi R8. to get some up-to-date info, I consulted -what else- Wikipedia. There I found out that this supercar is based on the Audi Le Mans quattro concept car, which was based on the earlier Audi RSQ concept vehicle. The latter was specially designed for the movie 'I, Robot' as a 'product placement'. But what was a product placement? Ok, it is something intuitive, but I wanted to learn a bit more. So again in Wikipedia I read its definition, as well as the origins of this way of marketing:
"In early media, e.g. radio in the 1930s and 1940s and early TV in the 1950s, programs were often underwritten by companies. "Soap operas" are called such because they were initially underwritten by consumer packaged goods companies such as P&G or Unilever."

Interesting, right? :)