At the start of the new (American) financial year, Sun Microsystems, throw a big Kick Off event. This generally consists of an afternoon of meetings followed by dinner and drinks. Back in the days before .com bubble burst these events were legendary. One trip had staff flown from all over Europe for a party on a ship in Greece. Things have been harder in the recent years… This year’s Kick Off in England consists of a party in a big marquee in the campus car park. Thankfully the Spanish put great emphasis on the importance of partying, so we were…

Over the last few months I’ve had the occasional meeting with the Mongol Minis and Alberto, one half of the Spanish Bullfighters team. In a further effort to answer Alberto’s myriad of questions I invited his team over for dinner last Tuesday. Cooking for six can be quite an effort so we chose to keep it simple. A selection of aperitifs like olives, chorizo, jamon serrano, garlic bread and crisps for a starter followed by one of my classic pasta sauces; Tomato based but with all the veg’, herbs and some king prawns thrown in to make it interesting. And…

You don’t realise how much you use the interweb until you are is without it. Our ADSL line got cut off last week. I’d like to blame Telefonica or the company I work for (who are supposed to pay for it) but the fact of the matter is it was my fault. I failed to pay the bill in time. The lack of connectivity along with a rather hectic schedule goes some way to explain the lack of posts over the last week. I’ll try to make up for that now…

We’d had the pleasure of being invited to the Wedding of James and Ana that took place on Friday evening. James is an English work Mate. After nearly four years of being with Ana, who is Spanish, the couple got married. It started off in a Church right in middle of town. After the ceremony we moved onto Camino Viejo for the reception. A good meal followed by a free bar and discoteca, with a nice selection of Music (James was adamant that he would not put up with just Ana’s choice of music) saw as celebrate through to 5…

My housemate had a bit of a result last weekend. He met a Mexican girl who seemed pretty keen on meeting up with him. She suggested that they watched the Mexico v Argentina game together. Not a bad offer. I think most blokes would be happy to have a date with a foreign girl watching the world cup, but he then remembered he’d offered to “look after” a friend’s very attractive Swedish friend who was in Madrid. She suggested watching the Germany v Sweden game together. Still doable… watch the Mexico game, make excuses and then go see the Sweden…