Back from Lowlands. It was a great weekend… I am still recovering.   Have a look at the pics.

The Bloody Beetroots @ Lowlands 2010

Last week I visited India for both business and leisure. As soon as we exited the airport, we were confronted with the heat and the extreme humidity. It became clear that this is not a good season to visit India.

Fortunately we had a driver and a car with AC which took us to our hotel. After a short night we were taken by another driver to Pune, about 150 km from Mumbai, this is were the main office of our project is located.

We stayed here for about 3 days to meet our Indian colleagues, see how they work and to explain the different types of documentation. My role was primarily to explain the Dutch webguidelines and the user interface guidelines to the developers and testers. Overall the business visit was a succes, we booked good results and it was useful to meet the people working on the project in India.

After the business part of our trip, we went back to Mumbai to catch a plane to Delhi. From Delhi we first went to Agra to have a look at the Taj Mahal and other tourist attractions. The historical buildings are amazing, but the people can be quite annoying. We attracted the locals like ants on honey. As soon as we got out of the car people tried to sell us hats, books, photo’s, balloons, everything…

The next day we went on a tour through Delhi were we saw different temples and other buildings. After 2 days we went back to Mumbai to catch our return flight back home. We had half a day of spare time so we decided to do some sightseeing of Mumbai on our own (without a driver). This turned out to be quite a task in the blistering heat. We thought it would be a good idea to do some walking, but after a couple of miles we were sweating like a pig and took a taxi to take us to our destination. After seeing The Gate of India and having some lunch we headed back to the airport in a local taxi.

Overall India is an amazing country, it takes a few days to get used to the culture. There are a lot of poor people, which live in terrible circumstances. There is a lot of pollution in the cities and it can be quite dirty. However, there are also a lot of people that are very nice. And even people how don’t speak a word in English try to have some conversation with you. With our Western European look we became a tourist attraction for the locals as well.

Take a look at the other pictures

Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong, nicknamed: The Snow Leopard, will be the first skiier from Ghana to take part in the winter olympics. He will be attending the games in Vancouver, Canada. For some reason it made me thing of the movie Cool Runnings. (by the way, there will be a Jamaican bobsled team this year).

More info on: www.ghanaskiteam.com or join his facebook fan club.

Chillin’  with my homie Ruud in Madrid.

One of our friends is getting married and to celebrate his last days as a bachelor we organized a bachelor weekend. We surprised him early in the morning when he went to work and we took him to the Ardennes. Three days with outdoor activities: kayaking, mountainbiking and paintball. Check out the pictures.