Oh boy, I’ve been waiting for this for a real long time. This has been quite a challenge to get this frame in Germany, I would never have thought…
Anyway, it’s here, and I love it!
Here’s a few pictures for posterity:
The pictures are not too good, I’ll edit one of these days with some pictures taken with natural light.
So this Salsa Casseroll frame is going to be the basis of my new bike for long distances. It’ll be mostly built around Shimano 105/Ultegra parts.
I’ll post some pictures of the building process and a list of parts later.
Traveling with Eurolines is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get…
In October I faced the rats, in December I faced the cold, what is it gonna be next?
And when you’re not fighting rats in a dirty parking lot at Karlsruhe Hauptbahnof Süd or fighting the cold for 2.5 hours at the same location, waiting for a connection, you still have to deal with nasty bus drivers. I think the driver from my last trip would have been at home in India where he would have been king of the road. His shouting “wir haben 30 minuten Verspätung” whilst ragingly stepping on the gas definitely reminded me of a trip between Dharamsala and Delhi. Especially the part about narrowly avoiding a crash when leaving the bus stop.
Believe me, I will definitely make true on my earlier promise to cycle between France and Germany next time, instead of taking the bus.
I cycle quite a lot in the beautiful French countryside, in Auvergne. It’s a very nice region, and I love it.
The only inconvenience, apart from a few nasty hills, are farm dogs. Those little guys are not always attached on a leash or kept in a close perimeter, and you often run into one that is running around freely.
If they’re small dogs, it’s usually okay, you can stay on the saddle and go past. You just have to be careful that it doesn’t jump into the spokes of the wheels.
But with larger dogs, I get rather intimidated. One technique consists in climbing down from the bike, walking slowly past the big fella maintaining the bike between him and you.
I thought it was bad enough to have to deal with stray dogs in the French countryside, but I was reading a post on a bicycle forum about cycling in Turkey and nasty encounters with Kangal dogs.
This is sort of the “official” Turkish breed, and they’re used by Turkish shepherds as guardian dogs for sheeps.
A typical Kangal dog, complete with spiked collar.
So apparently this is very frequent to run into these when cycling in Turkey. I’ve read that when they are well-bred, they develop a strong instinct of protection for their flock, and they go as far as chasing wolves that attack sheeps (hence the spiked collar which protect them from wolf bites at the neck).
Problem is cyclists are also considered intruders, and those dogs are extra large and fit. I really like their appearance, but man I would feel very uncomfortable having to deal with them, look at the size of this dog:
I’m not sure I feel like going cycling in Turkey…
In case you missed it, nine countries have joined the Schengen area today: our three Baltic states, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia and Malta.
For European citizens, we can travel through all those countries with just a simple national ID. This is even better for non-EU citizens who can now travel to these countries with a common Schengen Visa.
Goody goody!
An article on the BBC website.
Après des mois de recherche d’emploi, je me pose désormais les questions suivantes : l’intelligence économique est-elle un concept franco-français ? Est-il possible de trouver du travail à l’étranger avec des connaissances basées sur ce concept ?
D’une manière générale, à la première question je suis tenté de répondre oui, à la deuxième de répondre non.
Surtout dans la mesure où la traduction du terme en Anglais pose problème. La traduction qui revient le plus souvent donne business intelligence, alors que la traduction la plus exacte serait plutôt competitive intelligence, tel que défini par Michael Porter en 1980 avec son ouvrage Competitive-Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors. Il est tout de même ironique d’avoir des difficultés à traduire en Anglais un concept qui a été le mieux défini par un anglophone…
Le fait est qu’en Anglais le(s) terme(s) competitive intelligence est rare et est souvent assimilé à business intelligence, ce qui explique aussi que intelligence économique soit le plus souvent traduit par business intelligence.
Pour quelqu’un qui comme moi recherche du travail dans des pays anglo-saxons, je crois pouvoir affirmer avec certitude que intelligence économique ≠ business intelligence.
Continue reading ‘Intelligence économique vs. Business intelligence’
Well alright, it didn’t take me a week to get there, but I was too busy for the last few days to update this page. So we spent a few days in Berlin and now we’re back in good old Bayern.
Continue reading ‘Arrived in Germanland!’
I haven’t precisely been doing a lot of updating on this site lately, and that’s not likely to get better since I’ll be off to Germany real soon, first in Berlin and then in Bavaria.
The journey to Berlin is not going to be fun, I’m taking a Eurolines bus from Clermont-Ferrand to Berlin. I’m leaving on Sunday morning at 9am and I should arrive in Berlin on Monday morning at 6am. That’s right, it’s a 21 hours ride!
But hey, this is as cheap as it gets, and I’ll meet my very special person when I get there, which is more than worth the long bus trip!
