Jumping back flash?

I look at my hand... engulfed in a reddish sunset, the white laptop blinking in front of me, asking for more input. I realized today that I no longer just an employee but also an entrepreneur. My hydroponic project is getting bigger and bigger by the day and in 2012 will surpass my job as my main source of income. This will eventually lead to further decisions: should I make a buck on it on selling the whole thing to a conglomerate? Or should I thrive on my own? Times are dire for me to grasp for the stars, and I am pretty damn good at my job. Definitely.... Maybe... just like the OASIS album of the same name... From LULUland... with love...

Samson, Delilah and some serious conversation until 4am...

I am no stranger neither to cross country or crossing countries. In a matter of days I'll be traveling around 6 countries visiting 9 projects in order to access project progress. Some people will be hired and maybe a couple will be fired. But that's life, teams survive since millennia ago by cherishing the best and cut-off the weak links. And in this economy, the time between one member of the crew starts limping and the team's head-first diving is scathingly short. FIDIC will not save you from utter freeloaders :) thats what it says in my bible.

But today I am writing about the simpler things in life. A night at the Opera (no Queen pun intended) and a silences-filled conversation through the night, honest and pure, bluntly honest and savagely enticing. Simple things to keep our spirits high through this lame world of sorrow... just like a Blan des Blancs champagne or a proper Single Barrel...


5 o'click in the morning...
Conversation got boring...

la la la la...

And of course, this music vindicates everything I said on this music deserving Single-status :)

London Town...

Coming down Leadenhall Street you'll find Dion, a posh after-work pub. It became the place for me and the guys to have a drink or (much, much more often) a bottle of Champagne after discussing how bad the world is getting surrounded by kindred spirits of law firms and banks putting out billions of profits and bonus.
Last week I was dazzled beyond belief when a regular drink companion brought to my acquaintance one of the rarest specimens to be found in the City of London: a Portuguese female!

They were extremely curious by the creature and thought being myself a lovely chap with a witty spirit and exhaling sensuality all Portuguese, and particularity our women, would be just like that. How wrong could that go?

Very wrong. So wrong that after a drink or two whey left me with her while I was myself entangled in a very profound discussion about New World wines with a Swedish (and also female) patron. She just stood there, pushing her tits from under her top until the nipples were visible, lacking any idea of the complex talks occurring around her. Of course, if this was a Portuguese bar, with everybody screaming and getting drunk she would be the Party Queen. But this was London, and this bar was London's better populated bar and its most sensible area, the City.

So after a couple of drinks the poor girl disappeared into the crowd, thinking that we were all a bunch of brainiacs that actually talk about complex things without being at a lecture.

I like Portugal, but it would really benefit from importing a couple of Swedish Ladies :)))))

And talking about sweats... :)))





I really prefer the original. Nobody rhymes like the Doggfather and the dance version just kills the best lines. Njoy!!!

New whiffs from old geezers

Last week's BBC two-part documentary on Queen (Days of Our Life's) was sublime, adding a lot of immense unseen footage that really brought new light on Freddie's gang, mostly on the way they acted as a creative force instead of hammering on Freddie's sexual orientation gossip.





And then... IT HAPPENED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The last hurraaa on the Pink Floyd Front. Comfortably Numb With Rogers and Gilmour united in a The Wall Performance. Nick Mason, the usual freeloader (or, on his own words, a mixture of diplomacy and deceitfulness)

:)

No actual embedding possible so you will have to actually click, lazy reader...

This tells me a lot, Queen and Pink Floyd. And I am pretty sure that my free days will end when I decide to put into action my plan to kidnap both Mika and the Queen surviving trio in order to put them into singing Killer Queen for me :)





I am still hurting for the all Paul Rogers debacle, right?????????????????

P.S.

And... by the way... if MIKA can turn a Lady GAGA music into something interesting, he is really the only hope to revive Freddy's legacy into a stadium.

2 birthdays, a movie and a couple of women...

My life is simple. (just remove the 300k/y in business moves around the world managing Middle East's most complex project, being part of 5 non-exclusive relationships unraveling in 3 countries, friends trying to off themselves but calling nevertheless just to say goodbye, etc, etc, etc...)

I like it this way. I like to explain to every bartender in the world that a Mexican Mojito takes lemon and Tequilla instead of lime and Rum. I like to read 2 fiction books every week and a biography every month. I like all the anonymous people bitching on the comments box so I can know they are still alive and well. There is a lot of love in my life, although its not what people have for love in their lives.



But hey, People don't much of anything in their lives. Most of people live inside their heads, trying to meet their intrinsic needs with their need for acceptance in society or just giving up or living according to what they feel is right 'cause "out there nobody will like me". But I keep finding wonderful folks, that will be terrible to me in a month or so 'cause since I am the "ultra-liberal" person around I will not have any trouble for the others to be egotistical about it. And so I keep going to a higher level of awareness, leaving behind the ones to weak to carry the torch of a true friendship and in search of the real deal. And gosh I keep finding this diamonds that don't flinch to the hell of common sense. And I feel so lucky and humbled.

Because if on me way I find all this wonderful people with so little effort then my oh my how powerful would be if I really took more time to speak with more of this apparently lesser strangers I cross myself at me herrings around the world.

Life is this... life is love. Not the bullshit that people buy for love when getting into a contract with somebody else. That is not love, that is penance. Love is never one because there are no negative "Us" out there waiting to be found.

Love is a fight, and a loss, and a lesser commodity most of the times, in exchange for things people need right now, in the moment, like sex or cuddle. Love is not a word. Love is an attitude. I have this lovely attitude. And in retrospect that got me out of so many feelings sinkholes that I cannot even start to count.

...

Love is a friendship enduring through time.




The birthdays: Mahler and Liszt.

The movie: Terri

Njoy!!!

The Venice Report: Sequence optimization in 5 multi-orgasmic women types through recombinating estimulation patterns

(this is an overview from the available data, not to be confused with a fully presentable paper. The document is registered at the S.E.I.S. log)


1. Introduction

Considerable interest as been aroused by the international sexual investigation community on multi-orgasmic women's patterns.The issue is more pressing on a time that in civilized countries (the Scandinavian Peninsula, Urban France and most of the English speaking countries at their highest social levels) men are willing to correspond to their female counterparts wills. If women themselves are not capable of understanding the mechanisms by which orgasms are sequenced this might be an unaddressable obstacle in terms of sexual pleasure maximization.

The Venice Report was a random meeting between the Observer and 5 women, with whom he had a both friendship and a sexual intimacy, that lasted 8 complete individual sexual cycles through 5 days. The purpose of the study was to understand the route for a random partner to follow in order to maximize sexual satisfaction with each of the women.

2. Layout

Type 01 - A 27 yo woman with a 8-series loop plateau being the sequence orientation mostly CFCGY
Type 02 - A 21 yo woman with a 9-series loop plateau being the sequence orientation mostly CFCGCF
Type 03 - A 29 yo woman with a 10-series loop plateau being the sequence orientation mostly FCGF
Type 04 - A 35 yo woman wiht a 10-series loop plateau being the sequence orientation mostly YFY
Type 05 - A 47 yo woman with a 11-series loop plateau being the sequence orientation mostly FGF

3.General Conclusion

Less is more. When it comes to orgasm higher-yielding women have usually lesser C focus than lower ones. C as a usual focus in starting 8's and 9's, is present in 10's but is totally absent in longer sequencers. Although a complex subject to address, it is almost certain that F is the "natural" point of stimuli  and can clearly be considered a proxy when it comes to women arousal and satisfaction. But as far as series go it is important to note that long loops do not predict an equal long number of series. Actually, long loops are usually a clear sign that the brain as trouble copping with the intensity of the orgasm, one more reason for men not to accept a woman's orgasm at face value but to look further key points into fulfilling complete series in women in order to allow women to enjoy intercourse for longer periods at a much higher intense pleasure.

3.1 Scrambled Pleasure

One definitive conclusion one can have from this and other encounters is that the mark for a true series is for the pleasure to be dealt fluently through different stimulus points. Yes, it is possible for a woman to have such series like FFF or FGFF but this as proven to shorten dramatically the availability of endurance by the brain into get to its full potential. the Type 2 woman, for instance, had its limits shortened to just 3 series in a forced F pattern,with any pushing through Y or C resulting in more dramatic set-backs, including more recovery time between orgasms. C actually might be a full obstacle to 10-series and 11-series to fulfill any such potential due to shear exhaustion.

3.2 Too Much in One Is Worse For All

In most of societies orgasm is seen as such a goal that the interaction between an single orgasm and orgasm series is not properly addressed, neither the proper orgasm sequencing by the partner provoking such stimulus to attain it. Actually timing  is of such importance as sequencing. Pushing too long for C orgasms is an invitation for not having any G orgasms at all. The same with longing too much on the stimuli of F orgasms, killing F as potential orgasm region altogether. In fact G and Y are, per definition, orgasm areas with the most tolerance when it comes to timing and continuing the stimuli on and over the orgasm. The others work much better with an abrupt cutoff on the orgasm event itself.

3.3 The End is The Beginning is The End (and sometimes The Beginning is The End is The Beginning)

The Final Sequence is always an issue. What is the limit for any given woman? There are no sure indicators, the absolute one being respiratory arrest without heart arrest, with all the medical issues coming with it. Usually timing becomes more constrict between orgasms and any failed orgasm position in the sequence will lead to complete orgasm failure. Due to NGH deployment into the blood stream during orgasm higher yielding women might not feel any latency through sexual intercourse or reduced physical activity but a reliable trans series evaluating sign might be unresponsiveness to verbal stimulus and, leading to respiratory arrest, heavy hick-ups. hick-ups must be taken very seriously by any caring partner as possible the end of a line, since it shows that the last "safe" series is passed and that the body is hyper-ventilating in order to keep the brain in orgasm-ready condition.

The Rumour has it I am turning old... bitching and moaning from a whinpy Adele fan

The Plan was to see Adele in Madrid... then in Rome... and both concerts where canceled (in order to happen latter at bigger venues) so for my incoming birthday one of my biggest wishes was at jeopardy of not being fulfilled. It seems, fortunately, that the gig at Cirque Royal in Brussels is still a go. So here I am, dragging friends with me through Lisbon in order to fulfill my dream of getting up and close with someone that is, probably, nowaday's best singing fat lady.












 And like any old man of sorts, I am going to Venice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Godless in Tumourville (or: why I have the deep belief that a world without Christopher Hitchens is a much worse World than it with Christopher Hitchens)

You have to read this, oh YES YOU MUST!!!!!!!!!!!!

I know that an interview from a worn and terminally ill chap can be upsetting, of course, but this is no average Joe. This is the guy that has been screaming, from the top of his lungs, against GOD and of how much this entity is nothing but a trivial consolation for our despair over the lack of control besieged upon us by the world.

So I forced myself to dribble over my champions cause over and over again, sipping any word as if it was his latest. Which probably will turn out to be.

Not just because how much I agree, agreeing somebody is a giving-up process any stupid dork can ascend. But because of how much I purely hate some angles this guy takes. And that send me in a quest to be enlighted by reading and reinforcing, or ultimately overthrowing, my point of views on any given subject.

In this excerpt one can read:


'And I now realise in a secular way how that could be, in that I get a huge number of letters and emails every day, a lot of them from people I don’t know, and they quite often say things like, “If anyone can beat this, it’s you”, “Cancer is a fool to take you on”… Jaunty, upbeat stuff like that.
'A lot of people, because of my contempt for the false consolations of religion, think of me as a symbolic public opponent of that in extremis. And sometimes that makes me feel a bit alarmed, to be the repository of other people’s hope.’

Or basically: fuck y'all, you sheep-minded drones!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Because most of my loathing about the state the world is know is around the stupidity of people, in this enlighted age, being unable to read anything longer than a fucking paragraph. Most of the people I stop talking (and shagging) with in the last couple of years are people whose brain is dead but who still can make phone calls and drive cars. No intellectual interest at all, nothing to make a conversation. And this is so easy, if you think about it. Just log on to a tv show, forget the complexity of the world and indulge. And other than that just somebody to put in a stick and worship as your guidance beacon.

So sad.



Anyway...

Just finished reading 2 books that I am seriously thinking to make my bibles:



A Short Story Of The Future: Surviving the 2030 Spike

and

The Coming Famine - The Global Food Crisis And What We Can Do To Avoid It

This are transformational books to any one so go on and buy it, beloved reader.

And on the way to the friendly Amazon, a little more of The Great!!!

Another RIP - BIG LOVE (this one much more serious than a fucking bear) :((((

I never saw myself at this show because of the religious stuff. But I do relate of some of the more mundane issues of sharing affection with multiple women.

Ruhe in Frieden, Teddybär : ((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

:...........................................((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
 

RIP

(at least I know there was a smile in his face while dying since he died short after having sex)

Being a man that surrounds himself with women as equals it’s infrequently for me to get besieged by common-practice questions posed as an opponent view from a woman. Most of the time we are just a bunch of girls with one (me) being the temperamental bitch, but nothing so dramatic that I could be seen as a man on any given subject.

So, having all this frank and honest debate eluded me from the common doubts posed to any man? No. Simply because I keep meeting new people so every now and then I will get an apparently simple question that doesn’t make any sense to me from someone that thinks that question is logical to ask a… man!

So here it is: What do you expect from a woman?

Sort of What Man Want but directed to me.

What do I want from a woman? Well, I know what I don’t want. I am not fun of mono-orgasmic  women. So that would be a no. So the choice would be something of a long-loop, multi-orgasmic, peri-sensitive girl when it comes to the sack. As much as personality goes I would prefer somebody that could cope with the most acidic of humors while being extremely witty herself. Intelligence is not a must, but if you are going to date with a fuck that flies to a country just to visit this Gauguin exhibit in London and that Ingres painting collection in Paris while making a stop or to to attend a Linkin Park or Rufus Wainwright concert probably it shouldn’t be a full dumb cow.

Aimee Mann should be on her top female singers

Abel Ferrara should be one her favorite filmmakers

She should be able to understand a conversation even if I jump from discussing the ammonia production stagnation and its implications for the world economy to how hard is to obtain a proper Matcha tea flavor in Europe due to the crippling water over-boiling .

N+ will be welcome, but only true greys, nothing of the late 20’s creations and certainly anyone created by myself.

But this is such a bull. I have 8 women in my life, and sometimes we go to the movies, and sometimes we go to a motel. And everything is fine. So probably I will miss the enchantment of this perfect girl. Because she might be out-here but perfection in a relationship is how much new things you can give, not how much things you can mimic. 

Women that are so cool but have no money (so they have to come up with this deep-pocket boyfriends)

Its a new breed, brought to you by the financial crisis. A lot of women with a nice and posh college degree (Art History, International Affairs, Architecture) but with no jobs. Oh what a shame, investing all that time into a degree to be broke and poor. Poor? Who said so? These women have pussies, and as most of heterosexual men know pussy is a powerful facilitator when it comes to women well-being. So these lovely women just loose themselves as professionals and apply themselves into a profession that, although consisting of all the loveless sex and orgasm-faking apparatus present in prostitution, its legal: the pussy-with-a-degree girlfriend experience. STD's are a low-occurrence hazard is this activity, the boyfriend was chosen for being a self-depreciating rag with a steady flow of income, and the salary is paid through the "coolness" factor that the girl brings to her boyfriend's life.I see more and more of this girls in restaurants, bars, theaters and other public places where they walk their golden calves. Because they have a low understanding of social ruling their dearest think that they are actually showing off their girlfriends when they see how their presence calls everybody's attention in public displays. But they are so pathetic in doing that. First of all because probably there are a lot of exes looking at them, men that initiated that same girl in that particular expensive sushi joint, men that took that girl to a Opera for the first time, men that went there to give that nice pink neck a lovely necklace. And they look a lot to the pleasant couple, but in relief of getting  rid of this goldiggers. They even comment to the friends at the table: I had that ass longtime ago, tres expensive but an unforgettable ass. And they all look to her, and the dork at the table gets even happier for her girlfriend draws such a crowd.

I see the excuse: the world can be a dark 'hood for a girl with nice looks and some brains.  You try not to be just a felatio donor but the world just refuses to accept how good you are with your non-sack skills. And then this guy comes into the picture. Its a bad fuck but is a little insecure and it tries a little harder to please you socially that all the guys to which you were equal. So you forget the struggle of millions of women for the last century to be recognized as a rightful member of the society and just became a thing to be possession of this nice boy. I dig it, and I am dedicating today's music to your John, (all hooker's costumers are called John, John) and i am proposing some venturing: why not share the pussy? You pay it, its not like its gonna disapear or what. Give a little, charge a couple of hundreds for a night with the missus, be smart. Can u control yo hoe?


Its just sad to see this happening over and over again, specially with someone that, in my past, was carrying so much promise and whit.

But like the last post music chanted: ten decisions shape your life, you'll be aware of five about...

Geração (que pensa que o resto da malta é) parva - Dumb ( peope that thinks others will take care or their) generation

I just want to trademark this expression today, to use it next week when nobody shows up in this big march ordered by the ones that just stay at their fathers joint while at the same time spending their salaries in things like a car or a proper dress-closet. For somebody like me, working 12 hours a day and going home with more work to do, this sort of people are an insult, aggravated by protesting without even do any political participation. They want things to change but they can't bother to form a party.

And the worst of it all is that this same people are the ones that were taking degrees without any feasable real-world acceptance, avoid Mathematics and other have-to-think areas. So this people, with a useless degree and a useless ability to be contradicted by their families and friends are sad. And they will be sadder when oil and food prices shoot through the roof and they stop to have money to go dine out 3 or 4 times a week. So sad to see people go down without any self-esteem and fight.

I have degree .............................. GIVE GOOD JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The most violent country in the world...

Welcome to Portugal. Such a nice country with a XIX century feeling. Where honor is still paramount to reason, justice, decency or even common good sense. Here a nice old man can hold a dhild in one arm and and shoot a unarmed man with the other. I just love Libya right now. Bengazi? That's a resort!!!

The Foreskin (And why should be a crime do remove it)

"This unique skin is thin, with specialized structure including sensory
nerve endings, which enhance sexual pleasure. Unfortunately, circumcision
destroys most of this skin with loss of sexual sensation and reduced sexual
pleasure.
The normal penis naturally has sufficient skin that moves forward to cover
the glans penis. And, the skin is mobile enough that it can be retracted to
expose the glans for sexual pleasure, or cleaning, or for any desired purpose.
It should be noted that the motion described is in itself pleasurable and is part
of the sexual pleasure that is the birthright of any man. This freedom of
motion, so that a point of skin can be made to move half the length of the
underlying organ is not found in the fingers or toes, and is useful in many of
the functions of the intact penis. Understanding these functions will lead to
awareness that the foreskin is really not a separate structure which can be
removed without effect, but it is essential to the penis in performance of its
most important function, the provision of daily pleasure leading to sexual
activity and reproduction."

Circumcision and Human Rights, p.111

 by George C. Denniston,Frederick Mansfield Hodges,Marilyn Fayre Milos

We live in a medically enhanced world. Prozac, Viagra, Panadol and others ensure that we keeps ours minds sane, our dicks hard and our head headache-free.
 We forget that all this habilities, as magical as they might look, are mere non-solving ways of passing through this world leaving a positive mark. Prozac doesn't make you fight to make a better world, it just makes you accept to leave in a crappy place with no mojo. And Viagra only mkes your dick go numb, it doesn't makes you respect your partner more, nor makes you want to give pleasure to her, or wanting to know what are hers ons and offs. And Panadol is merely a temporary relief for the symptoms of something worse lurking in your body.


And circumcision is a surgical solution to a non-existing problem since it only make sex less enjoyable to men. This leads to less frequency of sexual intercourse, and then to a worse performance with partners since it focus the man pleasure in the orgasm alone.


I cannot realize how this atrocity is exposed in women but keeps being done in men without any trouble or hassle all over the world. 

300 posts? R U kiddin' me? Lets talk about something I like, for once

Seems like this blog as already 300 posts. Dam!






I look into the past without letting the scent of sorrow embezzle my broken dreams. I passed through the life of many but remained in the life of a few. I keep making new friends and testing in a daily baisis the strenght of the ropes keeping my raft transiting between others life's. Some are broken and that cannot make me other than happy that I still have in me the resolve of behind none-other than trully happy. So many fall in the traversing of time, its so easy to call love to non-love or friendship to some pause in loneliness. I look around me, around this 80 sms exchanged today, with this 3 hours on the phone today and I cannot help to smile that all this people making me alive are from ages ago and from a couple of weeks ago. The strength of the connection is not based on the time made but into the freshiness that people are willing to put into it. And I feel that connection is a word stronger that anything capable of describing two humans strong enough to let their happiness depend on other humans.

In a world of fallen intelects, where people know nothing about anything I am blessed to keep finding this women and men that complete me and enrich me with their questions and with their lack of forcing their answers upon me.

The path is unknown, that is why is a good path. Anything known would be just vulgar.

Keep passing here in the smut-house fellas, madness is guaranteed.




I am the blackbird, and if I have wings then I should fly.

Turkey for a week... a WORK week : )

Getting really busy with all this new JV management concept. Its amazing that I am from a country that is basically bankrupt and I just cant stop working more and more hours every day. I am a slave and this is not how I planned moving into international partnerships. FIDIC is widely accepted but also widely misunderstood so I have all this extra fluss coming but I also have all this long meeting that get very technical about what people don't understand. Cant be all love, people, it cant be all love : )

The 10 words hanging from the epitaph of any JV

"You have to do this, as our agreement and contract"

People overestimate contracts. They are not laws cast in stone. They are more like the write assumption that two companies are joining wills and wits. The achieve this common ground you need communication. And communication is nothing more than the respectiful exchange of knowledge through a proper channel. So if you have such a poor communication between you and your JV partner that you have to remember him the contract then you are doomed. Is like saying to your husband he is married as a means of sort to persuade him not to flirt with the neighbouring single.

So when the communication is so poor between JV partners that you basically just repeat the contract as a sort of replacement for honest and direct meetings then the JV spirit is already dead. And by my book, the JV itself is pretty soon going south.

So what's the thing with contracts to be upheld in a court of law? Easy. Contracts have no sense of humour. And they don't stretch or get short. A contract is exactly all the words pending on it and nothing more. But this is not the spirit of the JV. We should never walk into the mistake of assuming written words are more powerful as bounds then the people that keep them in the real world. And this are the true bridges to growth in a partnership. Any partnership.

So draft a contract as you would give an engagement ring: knowing it as its limits in bounding your partner close to you.

People I (can't be bothered to) Know

Portugal for me is far more than a geographical location. My arrival to Portugal doesn't happen when I land in Portela or Sá Carneiro airports. My arrival happens at the airport where I find all this Portuguese sitting for the gates to open.
Their lost faces, the silence, the inability to start a conversation, the excess luggage. This is Portugal. The notion that we are lost souls and our fellow man or woman will only bolster our suffering if we, by chance, open ourselves to them.
This time I was coming from Saudi Arabia via Frankfurt. And immediately I was hit by this silent people on a clumsy line, another Portuguese mojo.

I was lucky enough to find a german couple to start a pleasent conversation about the does and dont's of Oporto and for a while it all went well. And then a guy tried to pass through the line and all hell broke loose. Insults, threas, punches flying. Portugal at its best, a bunch of late XIX century ignorants dressed in Zara and Throttleman, another Portuguese brand that is a sort of Timberland with a 80's twist.

How did we get here? Socially, I mean. Portugal was such a promising place to be a couple of years ago. Sure we had less people with high-school diplomas but at least they knew to do some work. We had people doing stuff, learning a job, getting their asses out of mummy and daddy house before their 20's. But now it seems like Portugal is this bullshit-place where a sort of urban guerilla gangs led by teens spread fear and terror among proper adults who should be working anyhow.

I am so sad with this, all this kids that could be proper taught. All this guys with my age and with no better qualification than to work in some grocery store.

And all this concept that children and teens are this demigods that have to be utterly respected no matter what. You know what kids? Chinese jackasses that study 6 hours a day don't give a fuck about how nice is your hairstyle. And if by mistake you get to work in a company you are righter the more you keep calm, not how much you scream and curse.

So Portugal for me starts very soon in did. You have to tune down your scorn and prepare to face the grey people on that decrepit rectangle. Preferably with this tune on the speakers. : )))))))))))

Noise vs The Engineering College (and the best hip-hop I've eard in years, from Dr DRE & friends)

I wasn't suposed to be here. It was all a mishap, you see. Just a little detour from a stupid quiet life and now here I am. Even this was an accident. I was in Frankfurt when I got the call, yelling with my Project Managers about some stupid structure that had to be setup in order for some stupid contractor to cast concrete before reaching the stupid deadline. And it was a normal day, with all 3 phones ringing at the same time and emails popping from them like the world was about to end.

I even remember it was a very calm day. Come one! A day in my life where its 3pm and nobody got sacked? Its the equivalent of the Biblical story of the lion sleeping with the lamb : ))))))))))))

And then it happened. My boss called. From Paris. To rush hastelly to the South of France. What??????????? I was in my way to London, for criyng out loud! Don't U people respect a guy's agenda? Get one for yourself, you fucking twat!

Yes, he had one, but it had to be changed because of his daughter's accident. He would travel to Lyon to be with his family and somehow I needed to manage to fly into the South of France in the next 12 hours. "to do what?" I asked.

"To speak at my alma matter about our latest projects in Abu Dabi in the context of the FDIC bidding."

For a second I was gobsmacked. My boss is considered the closest thing to God in FDIC arbitration, litigation and protocol. And I am an wise-ass that five years ago wouldn't figure a Red Book structure from a JCT one. So I was kind of humbled by the thing. Very humbled. Extremely humbled. And worried. Because the last thing you want is to give yourself a reason to be disappointed with yourself. Other people disappointed, no problem, no problem at all. They don't know how hard it was, they don't know you fiblleshly you fought that fight, how hurt you were. But to disappoint people that are the future of project management by not being perfect? I was sweating like a pig for a couple of seconds.


And then it hit me. All this people with me, all this responsibility. Thousands of people need my signature just to get their salary. That's hard. That is really hard. So this, this 400 alumni in some worn-out university in the South of France. Peace of Cake, bring them on!


All went well. I didn't even had a presentation. I limited myself to be a little more honest with them than the rest of the speakers in order to give to those students something useful for their future careers.


Is there any perfect form of contract? 

Under the right circunstances, a perfect balance between JCT and ICE are perfect into controling both parts powers but at the field there is always a changing force game between contractors and developers, specially in places like the Middle East where labor and equipment are scarce.


How definitive can a schedule be?


It depends of how much experience the scheduler is on that particular structure and production environment. But even the most perfect schedule falls under cracks when not tacking into consideration the management aspects of financing a $6.000.000.000 project. The company focus might shift from that project to other and so do financing. keeping a defined schedule for which there is no money available is a farce or worse, with liabilities emerging from the contracts clauses.


What is the pro/cons ratio of a company keeping their one construction personel and equipment on a project versus contracting and/or JV's?


It depends, of course. If through the company you can assure proper equipment in a area where contractors are poorly fed you will need to get that machinery in the project and use it by yourself if you want to be a game changer in terms of construction standards and practices. Of course that its better for you to have a long-term plan on developing the contractors ability to deal with that equipment, even as a mean to generate profit from leasing that same equipment as it depreciates.


The engineering supervision should be able to intervene at project management-level in mega-projects?


No, they shouldn't. But should be kept in the game at all times. You cannot plot against the guys with the science. But you can push the limits by testing your equipment independently. It happens every day in my projects to have some limits drawned in a imaginary scaffolding while the ACTUAL scaffolding takes more 30% anyway! That is fundamental in a proper managed project.


By the end of the presentation I had 3 job offers, a dinner with some very nice looking future civil engineers and the friendship of some heavily connected people in the project engineering world.

But the biggest honor was due. At my arrival to Rabat I had this lovely Olympo S.T. Dupont stylo waiting for me. From my boss, thanking me for the inspiring moment.


For the first time in 5 years I felt that I had truly achieved something...

I felt light like a feather. And confident as a bull just before charging to the matador's sword. This is success, no matter how much money you stack in the process of collecting this treasured moments.



Where is the Noise?????????? I am there... 3 times!!!!!!!!!!!! : )))))))))))))))))))))))))))))


Here I am... bottom right... the shining head! : )))))))))))


And a crazy one for goodbye : ))



Dr DRE in da Modafuckin' house! This is hip hop nirvana. 2010 will be remembered for this, I am sure.