Catch-up!!

Now that I'm done with my formal education section of school here's a re-cap of the last few months...

Starting with skydiving in switzerland (April 23-25th)
Spending so much time in the city I forgot how much I loved nature Interlacken was surrounded by beautiful glacial blue lakes and tall snow capped mountains and was super peaceful. Interlacken is a small Swiss city which lies in the Bernese Oberland on an alluvial plain, between Lake Thun and Lake Brienz. It's presided over by the three huge mountains, Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau, and is a little slice of heavin on earth.
We arrived at Balmer's Hostel late friday night.Balmer's is the 1st and oldest private hostel in Switzerland, situated right in the middle of the Swiss Alps, and have perfected the art of making your stay an adventure you won’t forget. Breakfast included and event a relaxation room full of hammocks. Balmer's also has one of the only clubs open past 10pm in Interlacken, unfortunately since we had to be awake early for skydiving we didn't get to join in the fun.


Early the next morning we hopped in the skydive switzerland van and drove about 45 min to our destination. And after a few hours of hanging out and learning the basics it was time to suit up. What could be more flattering than blue full body jumpsuist. The orange knees and but patches really added pizzazz. Surprisingly i was expecting to be nervous but instead my excitment only grew before the jump. we had a aerial tour of the swiss and french alps (including matterhorn) and then it was time to JUMP!
The freefall was amazing and I seriously contemplated staying in switzerland and becoming a skydiving instructor forever...

Bits of Barcelona...pt. 3

La Sagrada Familia is probably one of my favorite piece of architecture ever.

Bits of Barcelona...pt. 2

The food in Barcelona was delicious and I spent 70% of my time tasting everything i could, so i believe it deserves it's own post.


My main mission was to eat paella, I had never had it and I've always wanted to try. The second day I was there we took a bus down to the beach and ate lunch near the shore and we ordered a big pan for 6 people. The seafood was soo fresh and washing it down with sangria was the perfect combination for a spring time lunch at the beach



It was also the first time I ate a crawfish and although it took a little more than effort, it was worth the saffron stained fingers. I'm in the process of looking for a good paella recipe so I'm sure within a few months I'll blog about attempting to make my own paella.

In addition to the delicious paella, Barcelona has the very fresh and inexpensive produce and since we stayed in an apartment I was able to make guacamole for everyone a few nights. We couldn't find tortilla chips so we ended up eating guacamole with anything else we could find. The bread in Barcelona was such an upgrade from the bread in Italy and so we improvised and used bread instead of chips. on our last day we had to use up the rest of our food and made breakfast...seriously, guac makes any meal better...especially breakfast

Across the street from our apartment was a little hotdog place named "The Dog is Hot". I am not a big fan of hot dogs, the last time i had one was probably 4 years ago and that was only because I was at Pink's in LA. This place, however, was great! I tried the PinaDog and the SampaDog. The PinaDog consisted of pineapple salsa, fried onions, peppers,cheese and tiny french fries. The SampaDog was peppers, corn, fried onions, mashed potatoes(which is genius), cheese and tiny french fries. 2 heart attacks on a bun...

Bits of Barcelona...pt. 1

After a looong and labor intensive month and a half in Milano I went to Barcelona for spring break, we spent most of the first day roaming around the city...

We decided that the best way to spend 5 days in Barcelona was by renting a small apartment where we could cook our own meals and fit 4-8 people...these are the stairs up to our apartment...there was no elevator
the address said that it was on the third floor and in European buildings that means the 4th floor but we were actually on the 5th floor...avoiding loose tiles while carrying a full suitcase was definitely a workout

First Starbucks in MONTHS! The Italian coffee culture, although very rich, refuses to incorporate "coffee-to-go" which is one of my favorite parts of the American coffee-culture. As professor Dipak Pant put it: "Americans like BIG soup coffee", so being able to have a 20 oz. latte to last an hour as opposed to a shot-sized macchiato to be finished in 5 minutes was nothing less than nostalgic.


Barcelona had some of the best graffiti i've ever seen this was across the street from a nearby grocery store. This one, in particular, felt very Tim Burton to me and I had to snap a a picture...

Bottled Water Green Enemy #1

I'm working on a project in collaboration with Milano Green Festival and found a very interesting tidbit of information about bottled water...

http://yalesustainability.wordpress.com/2007/12/07/the-new-taboo-bottled-water/

Water bottles have become a huge problem and the use of them is only increasing hopefully this will inspire a few reusable water purchases like this one:

http://www.target.com/Gaiam-Green-Aluminum-Water-Bottle/dp/B001EGLB1Q/sr=1-13/qid=1266342400/ref=sr_1_13/180-2795306-5192163?ie=UTF8&search-alias=tgt-index&frombrowse=0&index=target&rh=k%3Awater%20bottle&page=1

Or at least spead the word...

An Interesting Video about Technological Progress

During my research of technology and its future I came across this video and thought I'd share:


http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potential_of_sixthsense_technology.html

At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data -- including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper "laptop." In an onstage Q&A, Mistry says he'll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all...

Back to the Daily Grind...

School started back up on Thursday, we got briefed on our new workshop:"The Home Beyond the Boundaries" and we met the big players in the company that we're working with. I think this one is gonna be slightly tougher than workshop 1 because it has to do with technology in the home. I had no idea there was soo much cool technology out there! We're working with a company named BTicino http://www.bticino.com/ They're main focus is in home/hotel/office/etc. automation so things like controlling all the lights by a remote (or on an iPhone), accessing controls of your house remotely from the internet (like being able to turn the lights and radio on and off to simulate like someone is home even when you are away), also tracking how much energy your house/office/hotel/etc. is using (in collaboration with programs like googlepowermeter: http://www.google.org/powermeter/.

Our project manager, Avril, is from a company Design for All, which is a company that works with making everything usable for everyone! It's actually pretty cool, they technically deal with "disabled" people ie: people in wheel chairs, pregnant women, the elderly etc. but she doesn't want us to think about people with disabilites, instead we have to think of all the possible users as a whole and the space has to be usable for all of them:http://www.designforalleurope.org/

Avril is really laissez-faire and basically told us that we can do whatever we want. The general brief is "how can we us BTicino technolgy in an innovative way to better the experience of the "home"". We can create a product, service, or even a business model within this category. My group and I are meeting to discuss possible ideas and we have to come up with something by Wednesday.