New York ahead

I'm going to New York for the first time in my life. I'm not quite sure what to expect from it. I'm not spending more than a week there but I'm sure it will be enough to have a taste of what it really is.
My partners are going to run the NY Marathon next Sunday while I'm trying to recover from the evenings before - I'll be giving them mental support :-)
Hopefully after all the business appointments and schedules I'll be able to explore the city a bit better. I'll have to start digging some places to party before I'm there!!

Summer come back!

Rain season is here. I guess it's fair to say the Winter has arrived!
I hate Winter, I hate cold and I hate rain! The only good thing about Winter is the snow which isn't even that much here anyway. At least I could go snowboarding but in this country even the hills are artificial, The Netherlands is flat like a table, that's why I usually go to the Alps where at least you have big fat mountains! The only thing you can find here is Snow World.
Don't take me wrong, I'm not Pro when it comes to snowboard, but for me it's the best way to get over the winter would be snowboarding, not sitting at home waiting for the rain to stop so that at least I can go out and breathe some fresh air.

Come back Summer, you are forgiven!

Röyk a soup

Does anybody know Röyksopp?! Well I didn't until yesterday. The name may sound like an instant soup brand but it's a lot more than that.
A friend of mine gave me a ticket to the Röyksopp concert yesterday at Paradiso which apparently was sold out already which was a good thing to start with - sold out concerts are usually a good sign.
Anyway, since I didn't know anything from them (or thought so) I went to their website to find out a bit more about them and tried to get some mp3s. I have to say that I wasn't that impressed and so I went to the venue.
The concert was very very good. Paradiso is a great place for concerts to start with, for those that don't know it used to be a church and it was remodeled so now being used for concerts and parties - only the Dutch would think of something like that :-)
Anyway the concert was impressive, the sound setup was up to the standards and the lights were pretty good too. It turns out that they played themes that I knew and haven't heard for a while and I would never imagine that it was from them. At a given time I stopped for a while took a wide look around me and I could feel the electricity around in that room, every single human being inside that place was jumping up and down.
It was one of my the best concerts in Paradiso and if you have the chance to see them live I would recommend that you buy the tickets in advance.

Show the Oak inside me

Most of the people that know me think my last name is Taylor.
Well, it's not true, it's Carvalho - very Portuguese indeed, Carvalho means Oak tree in Portuguese and for the ones that don't know, Portugal is the world's leader in cork oak exportation.

Anyway, back to the subject, Taylor is my mother's last name. Usually when I start with this explanation people think that maybe my parents are divorced or I just don't like my father, since Carvalho is his name but the reason is much simpler, I consider Taylor my "artistic" name, like when Price decided to call himself "The Symbol" - how stupid was that?!

Since high school that my friends call me Taylor. Taylor is not a very common Portuguese name (it comes from my great grand father who was British) and because of that in Portugal people started to call me Taylor after my English teacher in the 7th grade found out about my name. From then on my colleagues adopted the name and it remains until now.

Now I'm living in the Netherlands and found out that if I introduce myself as Paulo de Carvalho makes people feel more awkward trying to pronounce it and it saves me time since I don't have to repeat it 5 times. Carvalho is not a very catchy name and Taylor sounds more familiar to people, stays printed in the brain for longer :-)

And what does my father have to say about it? - you may wonder.
Well, in the beginning he thought it was funny, when all my friends called home asking for Taylor, then he just got used to it he knows is nothing personal and I get along better with his side of the family anyway.

The problem comes when filling credit card forms and details - it's very common to have my transactions rejected or reviewed because the names won't match, that's exactly the reason why I'm writing this blog - it's a reality check, a wake up call,

My name is Paulo de Carvalho.

Do you remember BBS? BB what?!

As nostalgic as it may seem, the other day the era of the BBS came up in a conversation with my good friend Vitor Spencer. Most people that haven't had close contact with a PC more than ten years ago will probably reply - BBS?! Don't you mean BBC? :-)

BBS stands for Bulletin Board System and it was hype in the 70's until mid-90's when internet took over. Back then BBSes were THE thing if you were into computer stuff. You would need a phone line, modem (very very slow at the time) and PC and it was all text based - no fancy text effects, pictures or flash animations.
Then the movie War Games came out and if you didn't run a BBS or weren't associated with one in any form you wouldn't be taken seriously! Of course I'm exaggerating :-) but it's undeniable that BBSes were the inspiration of today's Internet. It also had a major social value since it brought the opportunity to create the first online communities were people could read and post to the - now banal - discussion boards and share files, games and (of course) pornography. It's also easy to say that everybody using a BBS back then were the early internet adopters. I was definitely one of them for much of my parents regret because in the end of the month someone had to pay the phone bill :-)

The interesting part of this is that when the first commercial modem came out about 30 years ago it had a 110 bytes baud rate! 110 ladies and gentlemen!!! Nowadays if you go to the supermarket you can probably buy a 20 MB ADSL pack and have a lightening fast internet connection. 110 then, 20.000.000 now. It's difficult to imagine and most important of all, where will this all end? One day we'll have dedicated fiber-optics connections at home and bandwidth will be an issue of the past! I hope I'll live to see it.

Anyone into photography?

David Lachapelle - http://www.davidlachapelle.com

I went across this website referred to me through a good friend of mine Claudio Garrudo.
I'm not exactly the best photography fan out there but I did get myself a new Canon IXUS 50. Still didn't get quite the hang of it, specially because most of the times I forget to carry it with me and when I do I tend to forget that I have it with me so that doesn't help much does it? I'll try to post a few of them here, after some special event or party (not that I party a lot... ;-)

Anyway I do have to admit that sometimes I do sneak to http://www.worldpressphoto.com once in a while because you do get the opportunity to see quite some very amazing photos. You should give it a try too.

Enjoy

Sad but true

My girlfriend is gone. It was one of those rare cases when both parties decide that maybe it's better if we broke up. The flame was gone and when you get to the point when you have to make certain efforts to keep it going on instead of being a natural thing it means it's time to leave.
She is French and I do like her very much and she is still my friend, I couldn't deal with losing a girlfriend and a friend at the same time and it wouldn't make any sense and I really hope that we keep getting along with each other.

Sad but true,

Bye bye Aline.

I went to Portugal...

It's true, I went back to Portugal to see my friends and family. It's always so cool to go back, it was warm and sunny (opposite to The Netherlands) and I had the opportunity to see a bunch of people I haven't seen for a while - I try to do that about 3 our 4 times per year - but this time was different - my father is moving to Brazil.
Yes, I said Brazil! Salvador to be more specific, can you imagine?!
He is a lucky bastard! My mother will join him but she is still waiting to get her pre-retirement agreement which is taking a bit more they expected.
I can't really complain since now I can always go to Brazil whenever I want and spend some good vacations - I've been there a couple of times and I have to say that it's my new passion. I don't think it will take too long until I join them. How can one resist to the beaches, the Sun, Caipirinhas (Brazilian cocktail) and those round behinds that so well define the Brazilian women ;-)

Who wants to join?! :-)