Hiya,

Just came back from football.... usual 7 a side with weird short and wide goals.

The game here does not have the same pace. It is too violent (sliding tackles are allowed) and there is a lot o running (the player runs, not the ball). The joy here is wining, and not having fun and enjoying the game. Well... at least that is how my friends here say that the game is meant to be played. They are nice guys, but have to disagree with them... :P

But I, even not being the most skilled player in the world, managed to score two nice ones today. That makes me feel happy, after all I don't care about winning, I just care about having some fun and playing some good football...

Joga bonito! (and make the ball happy) ;)

www.nikefootball.com

Don't know what is happening today... I am feeling a little blue. I think I am a little home sick.
Alfred went to Greece, Paul to France and Inal is going to London with his girlfriend. That leaves me here at the Uni almost by myself. Friday is the last day of the 2nd term and everybody is heading back.

I decided to stay here for Easter so I would study, but maybe it was not the greatest idea... I mean I have the SANS Conference in Munich (http://www.sans.org/munich06) next week, which is going to be great, but I will stay here for almost a month in a deserted campus. Maybe all I have to do is concentrate on work and time will pass quickly. Times always flies when you are busy, but I can't help thinking about home.

I spend time looking at pictures from Rio, listening to Tom Jobim and talking to my family on Skype. What the hell... I think it is just a small phase... I'll get over it. Right now I think it is better to go working a bit and leave you guys with some pictures from my home country that I really like.

C ya!

It’s been almost a week since I have posted the last time. I don’t know if I have been very busy or it is just that I don’t feel very excited about doing it. I have to confess that I can’t understand people that come along, read all this stuff and don’t bother to leave a comment. It is so easy! Just click on the “comments” link below the post, write it on the appropriate box and confirm! There you go. You can even do this anonymously so feel free to write anything, from complaining about my boring posts to calling me names. But please, leave a message. :)

Since I have not been posting for some time, I have a lot of stuff to talk, but as I am the laziest guy on earth I will make it quick.

First is to post the picture of me, Rabi and Nikos in London at the (ISC)2 roundtable. It was a meeting from some of the top Information Security executives and we were invited to ask questions about the future of the profession. Not only a very insightful experience, but also a very good networking opportunity. I hope we can all benefit from it in the future.

The interesting thing was the identification of changes in the trends related to hiring Infosec professionals. We’ve come from experience based recruitment to qualification based recruitment. The professionals on the table concluded that today companies look more for CISSPs, CISAs, people who have formal education like MScs, etc, than people who have experience on certain types of products of projects. Good for me. Besides that they reached a lot of other conclusions. If you want to know more, the transcript of the session will be available at http://www.isc2.org/.

The other thing I wanted to talk about is the chicken stew I made. It may sound stupid, but to buy chicken stock and be able to stew the chicken legs was a very big step to me as a cook. As the appearance of the stew on the chicken stock advertisement is much better than mine, I can assure you that it tasted alright, and I didn’t have any health problems after eating that… :P

Last, but not at least, yesterday night was a BLOWOUT. We went to the union again and all I can remember is Jaime carrying a sand bag in the middle of Magna Rd. Whatever.. :)

Well, that’s it for today. See you guys around and please:

LEAVE A COMMENT!!

The sunny Sunday went away and took the “nicer” temperature with it. As I wrote my last post the temperature got up to 9oC and I went for a walk: after all you can’t let past a chance like that! :)

Sunday was what I could call an “interesting” day. It started productive as I managed to finish an assignment I had to do and started to study another subject, but it suddenly got lost by the kidnap I suffered from the Stupid Friends.

Before you ask who they are, let me tell you that none of them are stupid. Or should I say “us”?

I met these guys last October, when I was still a “freshman” at Uni and didn’t know anybody. The first one was Alfred, the Greek. He lives on the flat below and is a kind of Greek “malandro”.
He exaggerates every characteristic of the Greek people (which are quite numerous here, so I’m starting to understand how they behave) and says everything loud and in terrible English. His most famous sentence is: “… ela malaka: when we were building the Acropolis you were still living in caves!”. By the way, “ela” is a kind of way of saying “c’mon” in Greek and I refuse to translate “malaka” at this time but can give you a tip: http://www.malakas.org/malakas.html … :)

One last thing about the Greeks: they are very similar to Brazilians. They like to have fun and have a uncompromised approach to life. The difference is that, like the Italians, they like to talk loud and love to argue about anything. To see two Greeks arguing about basketball (one of their most beloved sports) is hilarious and not possible to describe fully in words.

Alfred (or Al as we call him most of the time) is doing a Masters in Video Documentary, and his latest work is a report on our online gaming activities in Royal Holloway’s network.

The other one is Paul, a French who I met in Tommy’s (one of RHUL’s bars). He has a careless look, with trousers almost on his knees all the time and a hair that definitively would use a comb. But this “style” seems to be successful with girls. And as this is the only thing that matters I’m much more than ok with it. He is an undergrad in economics with great taste for music, good spirit but poor taste for beer (c’mon, would you say Grolsch is a good beer?!?!?!?). At least he knows how to make tricks with cigar smoke… so that kind of compensates… ;)

The third and last one is Inal. This guy is kind of a mystery to me. He is a guitar player who is studying music that lives in the same flat as Al. The thing is that he does not have a guitar on his bedroom, but a keyboard. He has awesome CD’s, but most of them with soft music (Steely Dan, Jaco Pastorius, etc…). I have never heard him talking about a concert or venue he is interested in London and he seems to never loose his temper, even when we are playing computer games.

Anyway, some things that I know about him: he is from the Turkish side of Cyprus (don’t know where it is? Look in the map – I had to … hehehe), is smart and very friendly and doesn’t like Dream Theatre (well, nobody is perfect).

So, we are the Stupid Friends because Al used to insist that everything in Britain is stupid: from the way they serve beer in the bar to the side that the Britons drive. Since none of us could give him convincible arguments, we decided that the stupid persons were us, not the Britons (which is probably the only right conclusion we came to): thus the name: Stupid Friends.

Well, since you now know the Stupid Friends (and you can see us looking stupid on the photo - Paul, Al, me and Inal) let me tell you what happened yesterday. I was invited at 7PM to go to Al’s room to participate in the last shooting of his documentary on computer games. I left just 4AM monday morning after a killing session of Battlefield 2 and waking up late for lectures…

As much as I repeat to myself that this will not happen again I know, deep inside, that I will respond to any other calls like that. After all I am a Stupid Friend… (grin)

Here I am… as I wake up from a good 12 hours of sleep I become happy in a sunny Sunday morning in England. You might ask: Sunny morning in ENGLAND? I respond: Yes! There is a beautiful sunshine outside!!!! Look ------------------------>

And you, in a classical rational conclusion quickly make the obvious subsequent question: Why don’t you go out NOW and enjoy the sun? And I respond: Because I’m warm and comfortable here inside and I’d hate to ruin that in a 4oC temperature. :)

Yes… sunny days in England are not exactly what I was used to in Brazil… but what the hell… it is still a sunny day and I’m very happy about it.

By the way, the last two days have been great! I have finished part of my obligations, cleaned my room (MIRACLE!), and even went to London with friends! Seems that things are improving and I’m starting this week with good mood and high expectations.

Everything started with a freezing wait outside the Student Union. The snow was falling and I had no tickets for “Wild West Night”. “Since when Royal Holloway’s’ Student Union started being this huge success?” I wondered… but hey, my friends were going inside and it was a Friday night!

As I managed to convince a guy to sell me his ticket for £5, and tried to dodge his girlfriend who insisted to have a friend who would buy it for £10 I was sure that I was not getting that old. Old people don’t stand out in the snow, pay overpriced tickets, and squeeze in a cue just for fighting in the bar for a beer. :)

As soon as I got in I saw Paul (a.k.a. freenchie) and Al (a.k.a. the Greek Malaka) and got myself a beer. What came after that is somehow blurry on my mind. But as I try to conveniently forget (or pretend to, so I won’t have to tell you what happened) I have a small smile in my face, sure that it was a great night.

For you to have an idea of what I am talking about, here are two pictures of the Student Union in a typical night. It is hard to think that you would have a nightclub (almost...!) in your university! Well... here in England they do, and it is fairly good. Sometimes they even have live shows, but most of the time it is just techno-dance-wannabe-hip-hop music. Clean teenager fun... :)

The next day, as I ate something and drank some coffee (yep, I didn’t sleep) I tried to put all the kit in the bag for the basketball game. I was still a bit drunk and I had to be in London with the guys for a game at 12:00. So me, Cherm and Jaime (who Cherm insists calling Javier, no one knows why) went flashing to the station to get the 10AM train.

As we got to London and went to Imperial College Sports Centre, I was impressed by Tanaka Business School. Impressive building and, accordingly to Cherm, it was the result of a £65m donation from a previous student. I wonder which former student would donate £65m to UERJ… and even wonder what would be the results if what that happened.

Imperial Sports Centre was even more impressive. Everything was shinny and new! It was inaugurated in 2005 and had everything from swimming pool to electronic lockers (don’t set up a weak password guys!). The court was great, but the rim was awful… there were some bolts over it and it was made by cheap wood… well, you can’t be perfect…

The game went on and I can tell you: What a game!!!!

We won on extra time, after Cherm scored a basked 2s before the end of 4th quarter. Royal Holloway and Imperial have a story of friendship in Basketball. It was very nice to greet the guys in the end of the game and be congratulated for being a good sportster by their captain. As some of us went away, some of us stayed for a street basketball tournament (which we were slaughtered). More fun!

To finish the day I decided to stay a little more in London to go with Jaime to a Japanese restaurant that Emmanuel, another Spanish
friend that I met the other day, told him about.

Great restaurant and great food. I went for sushi as it is almost impossible to get cheap sushi in London and it looked affordable. I was very happy with it in the end.

The funny part of the night was seeing Jaime trying to get the chicken with chopsticks… a disaster!

After a great day, Jaime and I went to waterloo to come back to Egham. This was the result of a busy day and 48 hours awake.

So, as I wake up in this sunny morning I fell happy and refreshed to go back and study XML, WS-Security and… oh oh… I’m late again! See you later guys!

Hi all,

As I start writing to this newly created blog, I wonder if this was a good idea. You know... exams getting closer, friends inviting me for a chat and beer and the "responsibility" of posting regularly...

Well, at least this will be an opportunity to create a kind of journal for me, so I can laugh at the stupid things I am about to write here in the future.


With a lot of things in my mind right now, I wonder why my life is such a mess... just like my room on the right (the pic was taken 5 minutes ago).

I have to finish my Secure Business Application assignment about XML today and have NO IDEA what SOAP or SAML are, I have basketball training at 6pm, St. Patrick's Day party at 9:30 and I am still writing this stupid journal... Yeah, my fault... and what a mess... :)

I have to confess I like it this way. When things are easy and simple there is no challenge... and life without challenge is boring.

By the way, the end of the term is near and I am glad lectures are almost finishing. Not that I don't like student life (almost no responsibility, waking up late and drinking every day) but sometimes I think I'm past this... the question is: "Am I getting old?"... :D

Anyway, loads of things ahead: SANS Munich in two weeks, my friend Gibran coming here on honeymoon, exams, Allan Paller lecture on good presentations, a good "challenge" on managing to get my HSMP VISA, and a lot of exciting stuff...

Yeah, maybe this is a good idea... at least I will document an interesting ad-hoc part of my life. Stay tuned for more!