Burns Night

Yesterday night we went to a Scottish party, called "Burns Night". It seems to be a traditional party to celebrate the life of a poet that had 13 children, each with a different woman. I don't remember the details but he died somehow at the age of 37 (probably because of the women :D ).

We had a traditional dish, with some mixed meat, very much like the Romanian "cartabos". However it was somewhat lighter and tested better :). As with any party there was wine and other drinks. But above all we had a live music band playing traditional Scottish songs which was very nice.

During the evening we've been learning many traditional dances. There was a lady showing us what to do before the music started. On every dance there was at least a person not understanding the steps, confusing everyone after the music started. Lots of fun anyway.

Take a look at the video below for a sample of the event. Photos on facebook.

Building the Router

Some of you may have seen my messenger status during the last days. You may be wondering what is that "BIR" all about.

Well, during the last 3 months I've been working a lot in building a router from an FPGA. Don't worry about the details. For those with some experience I was doing the hardware side using Verilog. More details in here:

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/0910/P33/

We were 5 teams involved in this course and last Wednesday we had to present our work. We were 2 people in my team, my colleague Alex doing the software side. To the presentation we had a series of important people from Cisco, Redgate, Zeus, Microsoft, Ensoft and (I think) Xilinx. Based on our results (and presentations) they decided who was the winning team. We also had Fred Baker (editor of rfc1812 and IETF chair) from CISCO on video-conference as part of the judges.

So as I was saying on IM ... we won!

I was extremely happy about winning because it involved a lot of work and to be honest the other teams were very good as well. I think what I was most proud about is that some of my colleagues from other teams already had experience with the platform I was using, whereas for me it was something new.

Well I won't bore you more on this. Dana is calling for me. We are going in town for some (hopefully) nice fireworks. This weekend Cambridge is ending the 800 years celebration and there are some light shows going on.

Ski in the Pyrenees

After an incredibly full term (the Cambridge equivalent of a trimester), I took a 4-days break in Toulouse. We went there to visit some good friends and also to take advantage of the relatively-close Pyrenees mountains.

The journey started great. My flight was cancelled and I found about that only when I got into the airport. Fortunately we were able to buy two tickets at a British Airways flight the same day. So finally, after about 12 hours we reached Toulouse. Nice weather this first day...

Next day we decided to head for Peyragudes (www.peyragudes.com/) for some ski. Was really fun, especially for me as I got to see my friend Razvan making some artistic falls in the snow :). Dana also got some nice moves. There are some photos on facebook. If you are not in my friends list send me an invite.

We stayed at a hotel (Le Floreal) in Luchon (quite cold in there to be honest) and next day I went ski again. This time I went for some ski right in Luchon, where I took a gondola from 650m up to 1800m. When I reached there I thought I was in the Himalaya. This time wasn't so much fun as Dana and our friends Razvan and Oana stayed for some shopping in the town. The fun was in the trip back home. It started to snow quite strongly such that half of the highway was unusable and the other half was quite slippery as well. When we approached Toulouse most of the roads were completely white (something extremely rare for Toulouse).

We were quite worried about or trip back to Cambridge. To be honest I thought we'll be staying a couple more days there. However both airports were open and we managed to get back home. When landing in London the ground was so white (full of snow) that I initially thought we were landing near some lake.

Holiday Stuff

So the holidays have come...and went, and I still got a lot of work to do. Probably that's why I didn't go to Romania this winter. Hopefully I'll be able to go in the spring.

Anyway, Dana's parents came to visit us over Christmas so we were able to celebrate in a traditional fashion (see photos attached). Worried by the possible extra kilograms that I could take after eating the "traditional" food (as in a lot of cakes, minced meat, etc... ), I decided to measure the take-in. As a surprise I actually had 1 Kg less but I think this is due to the strange floor we have.

The sales period has started here. You can buy a lot of nice clothes and other stuff at very low cost. This is similar with the "soldes" in Toulouse. I am not sure if we have this in Romania. Unfortunately we made a lot of shopping before this, just to have the presents for Christmas. It might be wise to celebrate Christmas after the sales period; or at least to give the presents then :)

Soon we'll go to Toulouse to visit some friends and do some ski. I really need this break. Hopefully the weather will be fine not like in Romania where there isn't a trace of snow in the mountains (aka no ski there yet; even though I've seen that a lot of snow is expected .. be prepared if you are there).

I wish you all a Happy New Year!